SH291: What the Data Told Us: Fear, Trust, and the Stories That Never Get Told. Part 2 of 3.
About this episode
The episode discusses a study on the barriers divers face in sharing honest stories about incidents, highlighting the impact of fear and trust on storytelling.
This blog explains how a mixed-methods study explored why divers struggle to share honest, learning-focused stories about incidents. Using a large international survey, focus groups, and expert interviews, the research found that storytelling is strongly shaped by organisational culture, fear, and trust. Many divers—especially instructors—fear legal consequences, criticism, or damage to their reputation, which stops them from speaking openly, particularly in public settings. At the same time, there is confusion about key ideas like what counts as an “incident,” what “risk” really means, and what a “just culture” looks like, with very few divers linking incidents to learning. The study also showed that when stories include more context, people are less likely to judge and more likely to learn, but most divers are not taught how to do this. Overall, the findings suggest the diving community knows that sharing near-misses and building a just culture would improve safety, but lacks the trust, understanding, and organisational support needed to make that happen. Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/msc-part-2-the-data-and-results Links and references: British Diving…
People in this episode
Host: Gareth Lock
Topics covered
- diving safety
- storytelling
- organisational culture
- fear and trust
- incident reporting
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: British Diving Safety Group, Frontiers in Public Health, European Parliament
Books & works: Development of effective human factors interventions for aviation safety management
More episodes of Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving
- SH297: CRM, ISO 8804, and Scientific Diving: Opportunities and Existing Materials
- SH296: When 'I'm Fine' Isn't True: Speaking Up and Ending the Dive
- SH295: Four Ways We Talk About 'Human Factors' in Diving
- SH294: Clickbait, trolls and comments. How dive incident posts can teach us — if we let them
- SH293: Why does nothing change? Why do the same failures keep happening?
- SH292: Learning or Blaming: The Choice the Diving Industry Needs to Make. Part 3 of 3.
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