Critical Incident Technique / CIT
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A research method developed by John Flanagan, in which informants describe specific incidents that were notably effective or ineffective rather than offering general opinions. The core proposition is that extreme cases carry the densest behavioral information, so systematic collection of them yields the critical dimensions of performance more efficiently than studying average cases. The key qualification is that the incidents must come from a representative range of situations.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Domain definition: specify the performance area and what counts as critical. - Incident collection: gather concrete extreme cases through interviews or observation. - Behavior coding: classify the incidents into effective and ineffective behavior lists.
Anchor fast decisions
Average performance contains a mixture of effective and ineffective behaviors that cancel out and are hard to separate. Incidents at the extremes isolate behavior that clearly worked or clearly failed, which makes the contribution of each behavior easier to identify. Coding many such incidents produces a list of behaviors that discriminates between success and failure.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_incident_techniqueverified
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