Alruqi, W M (2019) Predicting construction safety performance. PhD thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.
Abstract
Researchers and leading industry practitioners have turned to proactive safety metrics, such as safety leading indicators and safety climate, as predictors of future safety performance. Current academic research shows that the relationships between safety leading indicators and safety lagging indicators remain inconsistent, as well as the relationships between the dimensions of safety climate and safety performance. In addition, prior studies have measured the predictive capacity of these constructs separately even though they are logically associated with one another. Standardizing the measurement of proactive safety metrics and understanding how they relate to one another may facilitate consistency among the indicators or dimensions that define the two metrics, and such an understand may be helpful when pursuing efficient, multi-dimensional, and unified techniques for safety monitoring and prediction. This dissertation therefore aims to (1) empirically validate the relationship between safety leading indicators and safety performance, (2) empirically validate the relationship between the dimensions of construction safety climate and safety performance, and (3) develop a hypothetical exploratory model based on the theoretical differences between safety leading indicators and safety climate and empirically investigate using the structural equation modeling technique with data collected in the field. The first meta-analysis of construction safety leading indicators and safety climate dimensions is used to quantify the extent to which safety leading indicators and the dimensions of safety climate predict safety performance. The results of the two meta-analyses offer a set of common safety leading indicators and safety climate dimensions that positively correlate with safety performance. Data collected from a survey of 106 construction workers at nine construction job sites in the US were used to build the structural equation model to investigate the association between safety leading indicators and safety climate. The results show a positive relationship between safety leading indicators and safety climate. This dissertation is the first work that standardizes, defines, and measures these relationships. Future work might expand the hypothetical exploratory model to include other construction safety predictors (e.g., precursor analysis) and empirically validate the relationships among them to advance the accuracy of construction safety prediction.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Hallowell, M R |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | safety climate; accuracy; measurement; construction safety; monitoring; safety; construction worker; meta-analysis |
| Index terms: | construction safety, safety performance, practitioner, structural equation modelling, survey, accuracy, meta-analysis, safety climate, construction worker, dimension, dissertation, monitoring, structural equation model |
| Subjects: | health monitoring assessment and metrics, data collection methods, control systems, occupational health and safety management, research evaluation and metrics, statistical analysis, environmental health, professional development, research dissemination and communication, practitioner, health safety and environment |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Sustainability, Site Management, Information Management, Research Practice, Roles and Professions |
| 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