Methods for collecting near miss data

Near misses may be collected by way of several possible techniques. They may be reported by the persons experiencing the near miss on either a voluntary or mandatory basis. They may however also, because of their visibility , be observed by registration equipment or human observers. Finally they may be generated in experimental conditions, usually by means of 

A more experimental approach is given by Masson (1991) which deals with simulation facilities. These may be used to generate errors, recoveries, near misses and accidents on the basis of suitable scenarios. Because the conditions are under the control of the experimenter very efficient data collection is possible, but the question is always whether these data are valid and therefore generalisable to the real world. 

Another way of using simulation facilities is for modelling purposes the effects of time-stress on fault diagnosis for instance could be modelled in this way, and frequent errors and recoveries could then be used to arrive at suggestions for decision support and interface design. 

It is very difficult to advise on one (or more) of the above methods in a particular situation. The main question to be answered first is which purpose(s) should have priority. Even so, at least four other aspects must be taken into consideration.  

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