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mine safety continued they might need to make in order to successfully escape from these scenarios? 3. Have all the self-escape competencies necessary to perform these actions and judgments been identified? 4. Have effective instructional materials and methods been developed to teach these self-escape competencies? 5. Have valid and feasible methods been developed for assessing whether each individual miner has mastered these self-escape competencies? 6. Have knowledgeable personnel been assigned to assess miners' self-escape competencies and provide remediation as needed? Over the years, mine safety and training professionals have devoted a significant amount of effort into addressing the first four questions. It is vital that miners be prepared to escape from all types of contingencies. NIOSH researchers are attempting to compile a comprehensive list of self-escape competencies. They have reviewed mine safety training regulations and the available literature on self-escape competencies, and solicited input on this topic from many mine safety and training experts over the past few years. A list of the self-escape competencies have been compiled. A variety of good instructional materials and methods for teaching most self-escape competencies are now available from NIOSH, the National Mine Health and Safety Academy, and various MSHA state grants recipients (e.g., see Radomsky et al. 2009) "Escape & Evacuation: A Miners' Education and Training Toolbox". The best way to escape from a coal mine varies with characteristics of each particular mine and the sections and resources within that mine. Therefore, escape training plans need to be tailored to fit the site-specific parameters of each mine. Unfortunately, not as much headway has been made on addressing questions 5 and 6 (i.e., on the assessment of miners' self-escape competencies). With the exception of SCSR donning, individual-level evaluations of coal miners' self-escape competencies are not commonly performed. U.S. mine safety regulations require that mine safety trainers make an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of their training. Trainers sometimes do this by administering a short anonymous quiz or by holding a short Q&A; session following their presentations of safety information. For a variety of reasons, most trainers do not typically collect information about an individual miner's competencies. Therefore, it is often unknown whether all miners are sufficiently prepared to self-escape. January 2013 Assessment Techniques Multiple methods are needed for assessing self-escape competencies. The coal mining population presents many challenges, including a wide age range, limited time for testing, and variations in literacy levels. Trainers should be mindful of testing each individual in a way that is doable for him or her while still maintaining a standard of each miner performing the skill without help. For a robust training experience, trainers should be prepared to use a variety of methods for both teaching and assessing emergency response skills. Research on adult learning suggests that individual learning styles (and therefore the most effective way to present new information) vary quite a bit from person to person. Individual students have individual ways of learning. For example, some people learn www.coalage.com 27