The Relationship between Workers’ Attitude towards Safety and Occupational Accidents Experience

• Main Authors: VAHID GHARIBI, SEYED BAGHER MORTAZAVI, AHMAD JONAIDI JAFARI, JAVAD MALAKOUTI, MAJID BAGHERI HOSSEIN ABADI
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tehran University of Medical Sciences 2017-01-01
• Series: International Journal of Occupational Hygiene
• Subjects: Safety; Attitude; Occupational accidents
• Online Access: https://ijoh.tums.ac.ir/index.php/ijoh/article/view/229

Construction is one of the most hazardous workplaces in all around the world. Awareness about workers’ attitude towards safety could be helpful in anticipating the workers' behavior. The aims of this study were to determine both the tunneling workers' safety attitude and the relationship between workers' attitude towards safety and occupational accidents. In this cross-sectional study performed in eight tunneling projects in Iran in 2013-2014, overall 689 workers of the tunneling projects were selected. One-hundred fifty had experienced at least one occupational accident. Requisite variables of workers were collected via both standardized questionnaire and checklist. The participants were selected randomly with the stratified random sampling. The data were statistically analyzed using logistics regression, multivariate logistic regression and Spearman correlation coefficient where applicable (with a preset probability of (P<0.05). All participants were male with a mean age of 34.87 ± 7.44 yr. 21.8% of participants experienced occupational accidents. 81.7% of them were married, 51.5% workers had job-related to education and 37.4% did exercise routinely. Many of them were in high education level (35.8%), 74.6% had a negative safety attitudes and 25.4% had positive safety attitude. The results showed significant correlation between education level (P=0.001), exercise (P=0.014), accident experience (P=0.001) and occupational safety attitude. Age (P=0.108(, marital status (P=0.554), and job-related to last education (P=0.307) did not have any significant correlation with safety attitude (P>0.05). Accident experience, as well as education level, could affect positively on changing workers' safety attitude.