Development of extended speech act coding scheme to observe communication characteristics of human operators of nuclear power plants under abnormal conditions

Communication problems have long been regarded as one of the biggest causes of trouble in many workplaces. Consequently, as a part of human error analysis, extensive research has been conducted into communication. The existing research indicates that maintaining reliable communication is essential to securing the safety of a large and complex process or system. To observe the characteristics of communication, verbal protocol analysis using speech act coding schemes have been widely used in much of the related research. However, as existing speech act coding schemes do not provide a sufficient analysis information other than the distribution rate of each pattern, the development of extended communication categories is essential to overcoming the weaknesses of protocol analysis. The objective of this study is to suggest an extended speech act coding scheme and to elucidate the communication pattern characteristics of an operator’s conversation during a simulated abnormal condition in a nuclear power plant (NPP). The expected results are that conversation between operators using Multi-Way communication can increase the accuracy of information delivery and eliminate the possibility of improper operation. Therefore, communication quality control can be regarded as an important research area to minimize the occurrence of human error during communication. From this perspective, the results of this study would be a good starting point to improving the quality of communications in the workplace.