Creation of Two Valid Scales: Willingness to Fly in an Aircraft and Willingness to Pilot an Aircraft

<p>The purpose of the current study was to develop two scales that could be used concurrently or independently to measure passenger willingness to fly (WTF), and aviator willingness to pilot (WTP), respectively. This is especially useful to determine challenges involving acceptance of new aviation technology for both pilots and passengers. There were five stages in developing the WTF scale for passengers, following Hinkin’s scale development process. Cronbach’s Alpha and Guttmann’s Split Half tests were used to confirm high internal consistency and reliability, while factor analysis was used to confirm construct validity. The scale was tested in order to confirm sensitivity to differences in actual participant willingness to fly. After developing the WTF scale for passengers, researchers made minor lexical adjustments and created the WTP scale, calculating Cronbach’s Alpha, Guttmann’s Split Half test, and factor analysis; thus, ensuring high internal consistency, reliability and validity. These two scales may help provide researchers with a better applied understanding of applications within the aviation and consumer perceptions literature and also assist with pilot training and acceptance of new aviation technology.</p>