Goh, Y M and Binte Sa'Adon, N F (2015) Cognitive factors influencing safety behavior at height: A multimethod exploratory study. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 141(6): 04015003, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Despite efforts in recent years, the construction industry remains one of the top contributors for workplace fatalities in many countries. One of the key concerns in the industry is the management of workers' safety behavior. This paper aims to explore the cognitive factors influencing the unsafe behavior of not anchoring a safety harness when working at height. In addition, multiple stepwise linear regression, artificial neural network, and decision tree techniques were applied in the study to assess their usefulness in evaluating survey data of safety cognitive factors. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was adopted to model the cognitive factors influencing the unsafe behavior of scaffolders. The TPB postulates that attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms affect the intention of workers, which ultimately affects intentional behavior. The unsafe act of not anchoring harnesses while working on a scaffold was selected as the focal behavior based on observations and interviews with safety supervisors. Supervisors also provided their opinions on the underlying reasons for the unsafe act. A questionnaire was then developed based on the site observations, interviews, and literature review. Subsequently, 40 migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, and China were surveyed. Stepwise multiple linear regression, neural network, and decision tree analyses were implemented. The analyses revealed that subjective norm was the key variable influencing a worker's decision to anchor the safety harness. The significance of subjective norm was probably affected by the national culture of the migrant workers. In addition, the analyses showed that the relationships between the variables were probably nonlinear, thus neural network and decision tree are suitable techniques. The exploratory study provides the basis for design of an in-depth study on the cognitive factors influencing safety behavior and it expands the choice of analyses techniques.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | cognitive analysis; construction safety; data mining; decision tree; labor and personnel issues; migrant worker; neural network; safety behavior; theory of planned behavior; working at height |
| Index terms: | questionnaire, migrant worker, scaffolder, construction safety, China, unsafe behaviour, interview, personnel, artificial neural network, exploratory study, survey, neural network, literature review, Bangladesh, decision tree, national culture, planned behaviour, subjective norm, supervisor, fatalities, India, construction industry, anchor, data mining, safety behaviour |
| Subjects: | modelling and simulation, data science, artificial intelligence, data analysis and analytics, data collection methods, practitioner, occupational health and safety management, cross-cultural studies, geotechnical engineering, social justice, decision analysis, industry analysis, environmental health, behavioral psychology, management, health risk and incident analysis, research methods, Geography, financial risk |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Cost Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Risk Management, Roles and Professions, Sustainability, Digital Applications, International Construction, Ethics, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here