Yu, W D; Wang, K C and Wu, H T (2022) Empirical comparison of learning effectiveness of immersive virtual reality-based safety training for novice and experienced construction workers. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 148(9): 04022078, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Statistics show that novice and experienced construction workers face different risks of construction accidents. However, there is very little work on this topic. This study conducted empirical experiments to quantifying the effectiveness of immersive virtual-reality-based safety training (IVST) across 6 worker specialties in terms of facing 17 hazardous scenarios at real construction sites. An immersive virtual reality-based safety training system (IVSTS) is proposed to measure the effectiveness of IVST programs with regard to six specialties in 2 controlled groups: (1) novice workers (40 college students), and (2) experienced workers (40 randomly selected construction practitioners). The study results indicate that the proposed IVSTS improved the safety performance index of all 80 participants by 14.12% in terms of correct selection of personal protection equipment, and by 28.95% in terms of hazardous scenario identification. The improvement of safety learning performance of the novice workers was better than that of the experienced workers, especially for hazardous scenario identification, with a 15.90% higher improvement index. The improvement suggestions for the existing IVST program were summarized according to the influence of the individual characteristics of the trainees on the learning effect between the novice and the experienced IVST programs.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction hazard; construction safety training; quantitative effectiveness; unsafe behavior; virtual reality |
| Index terms: | statistics, construction worker, safety training, virtual reality, effectiveness, college student, construction safety, safety performance, program, construction accident, construction site, face, construction practitioner, experiment, unsafe behaviour |
| Subjects: | occupational health and safety management, sociology, environmental health, performance management, software systems, financial risk, professional development, psychology, work location, data collection methods, virtual reality, mathematical modelling, practitioner |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Site Management, Digital Applications, Quality Management, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Sustainability, Cost Management, Health and Safety, Research Practice, Information Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
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