Chapter 5 98 provided informed consent before the start of the experiment. Ethical approval was obtained from the Social and Societal Ethics Committee of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as part of the SHOTPROS project which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant number: 833672). Design We utilized a 3 (AAR perspectives: bird’s eye & police officer, bird’s eye & suspect, bird’s eye) x 2 (AAR line of fire: Off, On) between-subjects study design. Each participant completed the VR training and received the AAR from one of the three perspectives with the line of fire of their weapon either turned on or off. The experiment was conducted over a span of 7 weeks as part of the yearly training of the City Police Zurich. The training coordinator scheduled for police officers to attend the training on a particular training day in advance based on the officers’ availability. Eight instructors were selected for the experiment and rotated on a daily basis (two instructors were present daily, the pairings of instructors were also rotated). The AAR perspectives changed biweekly (e.g., Week 2 & 3 = bird’s eye & police officer, Week 4 & 5 = bird’s eye & suspect, Week 6 & 7 = bird’s eye only). During Week 1, police instructors involved in this study received special training to familiarize themselves with the steering of the VR scenario and of the AAR and its features (participants of Week 1 were not included in this study). The AAR line of fire alternated on a daily basis: participants of the first training day trained with the line of fire off, participants on the second training day trained with the line of fire turned on, etc. In this way, the participants were randomly assigned to the experimental groups. Virtual reality training (VR) The VR system used in this experiment was provided by Refense (www.refense.com). Participants were equipped with the Refense VR suit consisting of a binocular head-mounted display, microphone and audio provided via over-ear headphones, radio chatter, hand- and foot sensors for motion tracking, a computing box (backpack style), and a replica rifle. The size of the VR training area was 15x15 meters. Figure 1 shows the VR equipment used in this study. Participants completed the VR scenario in groups of four. The completion of the VR scenario took on average 13 minutes. Before the start of the training scenario, participants underwent calibration of the VR sensors and equipment and completed a short instructional tutorial in VR. The same VR set-up and training scenario was used in a previous study by Kleygrewe, Hutter and Oudejans (2023).
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