Niu, M (2017) Developing a process to measure safety climate under the aconstruction working environment. PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, USA.
Abstract
Safety climate has been widely used as a leading indicator to predict safety performance across multiple industries. Although extensive studies have focused on safety climate measurement in construction, the interpretations of the results are confusing to project management. There is a lack of theoretical development of safety climate indicators in the dynamic context of the construction industry. This research is aimed at developing a process to measure safety climate under the construction working environment. Four stages are designed to accomplish this research goal, including: 1) Problem identification; 2) development of safety climate contextual indicators, where systematic review and focus group discussions were applied to identify the contextual indicators related to safety climate; 3) development of the safety climate measurement process model, where a case study was conducted to implement the process of safety climate measurement in the construction context; 4) process model validation, where the process model was validated by focus group discussion and expert interviews. The results of this research include a framework of contextual indicators of safety climate, as well as a process model of safety climate measurement under the dynamic construction working environment. By implementing the process model through the case study, the relationship between site dynamics and perceived safety was explored. The research contributes to industry applications of using safety climate as a leading indicator to proactively manage site safety under the dynamic working environment. The findings also contribute to a more holistic understanding of the safety climate concept, and serves as a foundation to explain the mechanisms of the industry context influencing safety climate.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Leicht, R M |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | case study; focus group; measurement; safety; safety climate |
| Index terms: | interview, safety climate, focus group, construction industry, systematic literature review, safety performance, dynamics, project management, case study, validation |
| Subjects: | professional development, systems engineering, health safety and environment, data collection methods, project management theory and practice, occupational health and safety management, research evaluation and metrics, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Information Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Project Management, Health and Safety |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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