Evaluation of Fire Service Command Unit Trainings - Online Appendix

This is the online supplement for a study entitled "Evaluation of Fire Service Command Unit Trainings" (see https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-020-00279-6). This study was conducted at the University of Münster, Germany, in cooperation with the State Fire Service Institute North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (in German: Institut der Feuerwehr Nordrhein-Westfalen (IdF NRW)).

The lack of routine and training of command units and emergency managers is among the main causes of suboptimal decisions and could lead to serious consequences. To ensure optimal standards of emergency management training, specific and valid evaluation tools are needed–but are lacking. Thus, the present study’s purpose is to validate instruments for the evaluation of tactical and strategic leader trainings, in particular command unit trainings, based on survey data of n = 288 German Command Unit members. Resulting questionnaires were named “FIRE-CU” (Feedback Instrument for Rescue forces Education – Command Unit) and “FIRE-CPX” (Feedback Instrument for Rescue forces Education – Command Post eXercise scale). Results of confirmatory factor analyses show a good fit for the postulated four-dimensional structure of process scales in the FIRE-CU (trainer’s behavior, structure, overextension, group), for the two-dimensional structure of outcome scales in the FIRE-CU (self-rated competence, transfer), and for the one-dimensional structure of the FIRE-CPX. Further, strong evidence is found for reliability as well as for convergent, divergent, and concurrent validity of both the FIRE-CU and FIRE-CPX. Implications for research and practical application are also discussed to enable broad applicability in various educational programs for public security and crisis management.

Contents of the online appendix:

• Table A1: Translations and definition of fire service-specific terms
• Table B1: German and English version of the FIRE(-CU) items and corresponding sources
• Table B2: German and English version of the FIRE(-CPX) items and corresponding sources
• Table C1: Validation scales and corresponding FIRE-CU/CPX scales as well as additional validation items
• Table D1: Descriptive statistics for FIRE-CU scales and FIRE-CPX including kurtosis and skewedness
• Table E1: Descriptive statistics and correlations of study variables
• Questionnaire templates for FIRE-CU/CPX (in English and German) and scoring instructions

In addition, this online appendix contains corrected versions of figures 1 to 3. In our article  (Thielsch & Hadzihalilovic, 2020) it was incorrectly stated that standardized coefficients were shown in these figures relating to confirmatory factor analyses. In fact, however, the non-standardized coefficients appear in the illustrations (it is important to note that the results of the factor analyses do not change). Thus, the corrected figures can be found in this online supplement. We recommend using these corrected figures in case of a presentation of our results.