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Occupational accident experience: Association with workers’ accident explanation and definition
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Safety Science 46 (2008) 959–971 www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci
Occupational accident experience: Association with workers’ accident explanation and definition Cla´udia Niza a,*, Sı´lvia Silva b, Maria Luı´sa Lima b a
b
London School of Economics (LSE), Operational Research Department, Portugal Street, London, UK Centro de Investigacßa˜o e Intervencßa˜o Social (CIS)/Instituto Superior de Cieˆncias do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), Departamento de Psicologia Social e Organizacional, Av. Forcßas Armadas, Ed. ISCTE, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract Problem: The experience of an occupational accident, as a harmful and unexpected event, may elicit a process of construction of meaning. However, research has provided inconsistent results regarding to the role of such an experience in posterior sense-making. This article aims at understanding the association of an occupational accident experience with the explanation and definition given by workers for such events. Method: Fifty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted with workers from several sectors. This data was subject to content analysis and HOMALS (Multiple Correspondence Analysis). Results: An accident experience was associated with defensive explanations (focused on causes external to workers) and defensive definitions (highlighting the sudden nature of accidents and organizational weaknesses). Discussion: The study of the construction of meaning about accidents and its variability is highly relevant for understanding posterior preventive behavior and the accuracy in the report of future occupational accidents. Impact on industry: Organizations should be aware of discrepancies in conceptions and interpretations among employees about occupational accidents when planning prevention programs or improvement of accident data registration. Ó 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Occupational accident; Accident experience; Lay explanation; Definition; Prevention
1. Problem Occupational accidents represent a serious problem to society, with statistical data alerting to the high frequency and severity of these events every year (e.g., ILO, 2002). Research on occupational accidents has exposed the negative impact these hazards have on their victims, families and co-workers (e.g., Dembe, 2004), with both consequences for cognition and behavior (see Goncßalves et al., 2008). The role of a personal accident experience in the way individuals think about these hazardous events is not well-established in literature. On one hand, some studies have shown that an accident experience has an *
Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 217903079; fax: +351 217903962. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Niza), [email protected] (S. Silva), [email protected] (M.L. Lima).
0925-7535/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2007.11.015
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important impact on individuals’ subsequent sense-making. Shaver (1970), based on the work of Walster (1966), developed the defensive attribution hypothesis which claimed that the victims of accidents tended to explain the event in a way that personal responsibility is minimized. Further supporting results (e.g., Salminen, 1992) showed that, when explaining an accident, workers tended to focus on the circumstances of the accident, whereas supervisors tended to blame the employees as the source of the deviation from the normal work routine. This attribution difference is the most replicated result regarding the impact of a personal accident experience on sense-making (e.g., Kouabenan, 2000c, 2001b). Gyekye and Salminen (2006) demonstrated that this tendency is also shown by coworkers who empathize with the victim of the accident. The authors identified three categories of coworkers in their relation to the accident (situationally relevant, personally relevant and non-relevant) and concluded that witnesses who had some perception of personal or situational similarity with the victim attribute less responsibility to the hazarded worker. However, other empirical findings failed to find an association between accident occurrence and reasoning. Gyekye (2003) in a study about the attribution of causes for occupational accidents in both dangerous (miners) and non-dangerous (textile employees) work environments, concluded that victims perceived workers’ personal characteristics to be primarily responsible for accident occurrences. On the other hand, Kouabenan (1998) in a study about the beliefs and perceptions of risk related to accidents concluded that ‘‘the true effect of accident experience (. . .) remains to be established” (p. 251) as he found no connection between a prior accident history and specific beliefs related to accidents. Moreover, Girasek (1999) explored the meaning of the word accident with the purpose of understanding the lay notions of preventability and predictability related to accidents [e.g., when you hear the work accident, do you usually think that what happened could have been predicted (prevented)?]. Within the socio-demographic information collected from participants (e.g., sex, age), the author included data from prior accident experience but concluded that previous victims did not differ significantly from non-victims in the interpretations given to the word accident. Understanding the construction of meaning individuals make of their experience can be related to the study of lay epistemology or the process of knowledge acquisition and organization of laypeople (Effler, 1984). In the case of hazardous events, the attribution of causes is the usual framework (Silvester and Chapman, 1997). However, causal attribution is included in a larger scheme of sense-making of the world and the search of causes to events is just one of the forms through which individuals understand their social environment (Pernanen, 1993). As exposed by Bar-Tal and Kruglanski (1988), the theory of lay epistemology has two distinct but interrelated categories: on one hand, identification and classification of concepts, and on the other hand, the connection between concepts, where the search of causality is included. Following this perspective, the definition of concepts or searching for ‘‘what is it” and not just ‘‘why is it” is another important way of constructing meaning (e.g., Condit et al., 2004). Moreover, as these two categories are logically related (Bar-Tal and Kruglanski, 1988), it is plausible to think that these two processes may be connected in a way that the causes individuals give to explain an action or event may be coupled with the definition they provide for it. We intend to clarify this relationship, focusing on the analysis of the impact of a worker’s accident experience on both the causal attributions and definitions of occupational accidents. 1.1. Causal attribution for occupational accidents Attribution activity is the process of sense-making whereby the individuals attempt to identify the causes that are present in their daily lives (Deschamps and Cle´mence, 2000) either about feelings, behaviors or events (e.g., Kelley and Michela, 1980). The foremost findings in attribution literature are the actor/observer distinction (Jones and Nisbett, 1971) and the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). Jones and Nisbett (1971) exposed the attribution differences between actors and observers to an event, and presented the explanation that distinct personal involvement and access to information tended to make actors more focused on external causes (associated with the context of the situation) and observers on internal causes (connected to the individuals). Regarding the other important finding, Ross (1977) defined what was called the fundamental attribution error, characterised by the fact that people generally tend to attribute the causes of events to the individuals involved in them, neglecting the importance of situational factors.
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This causal attribution framework has been applied to the study of hazardous events in the workplace, namely burnout (Moore, 2000), alcohol-related accidents (Pernanen, 1993) or occupational accident (e.g. Melia` et al., 2001) because these kind of rare or overwhelming events at work make employees stop and ask why (Silvester and Chapman, 1997). Particularly regarding occupational accidents, the causal search refers to the process of determining why an accident has occurred. The outcome of this search is the causal attribution: the individual’s explanation of what caused the accident. Despite the consistency in the aforementioned attribution differences between victims and observers of accidents, Kouabenan (1999, 2001a) mentioned the existence of other factors that could influence the lay explanations of accidents. On one hand, age was shown to have an influence in employees’ explanations to occupational accidents (e.g., Melia` et al., 2001), being older workers more likely to attribute the event to external factors and younger workers to refer internal attributions. On the other hand, Gherardi et al. (1998) referred that a higher educational level was associated with internal attributions, by contrast with external attributions given mainly by low literate individuals. Kouabenan et al. (2001) showed that the sex and the hierarchical level of individuals played a significant role in the attributions for an accident. These authors concluded that subjects with a high hierarchical position made more attributions blaming the victim than did subjects in a subordinate level. Moreover, sex interacted with the hierarchical position in a way that male supervisors made more internal attributions but there were no differences among women of different levels. At an organizational level of analysis, Hofman and Stetzer (1998) referred safety climate as a moderator of the common defensive attribution pattern found in victims. Safety climate as the perceptions of events, practices and behaviors related to safety in the organization (Silva et al., 2004) was shown to attenuate the tendency for defensive attributions, resulting that individuals working in a positive safety climate tended to make more internal attributions than employees in a negative safety climate organization. Regarding organizational culture, research has shown that different communities of practices and shared knowledge tend to give different explanations to occupational accidents. In a study on the construction sector, Gherardi et al. (1998) concluded that engineers explained accidents as abnormal events resulting from the disrespect of safety rules, while foremen justified the occurrence of accidents as being an expected result of the dangerousness of the work environment. Lastly, Kouabenan (2001) focused on the impact of national cultures on lay explanations, concluding that western individualistic societies present more internal attributions to accidents, while more collectivist societies tend to offer more explanations related to external factors. The existence of several variables that have been shown to play a role in the attribution process suggests that the attribution of specific causes to accidents may vary according to personal characteristics, organizational context or cultural variables. It is a dynamic and purposive process that provides individuals with an internal sense of security and order. This subject is of extreme importance because, regardless of the actual causes of particular accidents, it is the explanation given by individuals that determine their emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses to the accident (Woodcook, 1995). The application of attribution theory to occupational accidents is highly relevant because identifying the causes of accidents is a way of structuring the situation and relating it to one’s motivations and needs (Pernanen, 1993) and a fundamental prerequisite for preventive action (e.g., Kouabenan, 1998). There are several studies that acknowledge the importance of understanding the attribution of causes to events (e.g., Butchart et al., 2000; Kouabenan, 2000a) for prevention. Individuals adjust their future behavior to the perceived causes of accidents and the belief of preventability is central to prevention actions (Poole, 1987). Moreover, if naı¨ve causal explanations for accidents are communicated, accidents countermeasures could be better understood and more easily accepted because they would integrate the cognitive and emotional functioning of those directly involved in their execution (Kouabenan, 2000b). 1.2. Definition of occupational accident From the perspective of international organisms, ILO (2002), in its worldwide report on Recording and Notification of Occupational Accidents and Diseases, concluded that there was a great variety of occupational accidents definitions among countries, ranging from a simple reference in legislation to accidents occurring in the workplace (e.g. Botswana, UK) to countries with a more precise definition (e.g. USA). Similarly, Eurostat in its Questionnaire on National Declaration Systems of Accidents at Work, identified variability in accident definition as a factor that could compromise the comparability of data on national occupational accidents.
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From an academic perspective, there are very few studies that have analysed the importance of occupational accidents definition. In a study on hospital service workers, Weddle (1996) found that of all workers recalling having been injured in the previous year, about 40% did not report one or more injuries. For most of these cases, subjects said that they did not consider that particular harmful event to be an occupational accident. On the other hand, Conroy and Sciortino (1997) evaluated whether different definitions used for occupational deaths would identify different cases and proposed a definition for occupational injury. According to them, injury is consensually defined by researchers as ‘‘tissue or body damage or loss of function of a body part” (p. 274) but the problem is the occupational prefix as it ‘‘is more difficult to define and there is no standard definition used consistently by researchers. Definitions vary widely and depend upon the data source and reason for identifying cases of occupational injuries” (p. 274). These authors provided evidence suggesting that counts of occupational injury fatalities based on surveillance systems using restricted definitions differ from systems using broader definitions for occupational injury death. In a study by Saldan˜a et al. (2003) there were examined the differences and similarities between several possible ways to define occupational accidents. The authors mentioned that there exist two different views on what constitutes an occupational accident: the first integrates all events, with or without injuries, whereas in the second, occupational accidents are only those that result in injury consequences (naming the events that do not result in injuries as incidents). These authors defended the use of a wide definition that should cover all events with potential to cause damages (personal or organisational) as a more valid analysis framework than a narrow definition of occupational accidents. As suggested by Pernanen (1993), the lack of interest or awareness about the importance of the definition of the concept accident (reflected in the scarce studies on this subject) may be due to the fact that most researchers think of occupational accident as a well-defined expression, with an equally shared meaning and find no need for further clarification. However, a study on the definitions presented in occupational health and safety literature (Niza et al., 2006) showed that there are a number of different definitions in use, depending on the authors’ scientific domain and nationality. Moreover, there are noteworthy examples from studies about the public sense-making (e.g., Condit et al., 2004; Chapman et al., 2003) that acknowledge the importance of studying the meaning of concepts to individuals because there is evidence of a significant variety of interpretations for the same words. These discrepancies in the definition and interpretation of what is an occupational accident may obstruct an effective communication between workers, employers and governmental organizations. The definition used by institutional entities may not be shared by organizations, and organizations may have an official definition that is very different from what its employees think an occupational accident is. There is a potential space for concept misunderstanding that may create gaps between the number of accidents that occur and the number present in official statistics. 1.3. Aim of the study Insofar, research has shown that different people may perceive and interpret the same accident in different ways and that an accident experience has some impact on posterior sense-making. Although there is a consistent amount of evidence about the type of explanations victims of accidents give, it is not clear the impact this experience has on the definition of the event and how these two sense-making processes may be connected. As shown in literature (e.g., Bar-Tal & Kruglanski, 1988) the combined study of these subjects is fundamental to understand the overall lay reasoning about occupational accidents. Given these considerations, in the present study we aim at understanding the association of a personal occupational accident experience with the causal attributions and definitions given by workers. 2. Method 2.1. Sample The sample was composed by 56 subjects (29 women and 27 men), with ages ranging from 20 to 64 years old (average 36.98). The participants worked in the services (63.6% of which 17.9% in health and 8.9% in education) or industry (35.7% of which 7.1% in construction) sectors. Seniority in the organizations had a min-
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imum of 6 months and a maximum of 32 years, with an average of about 8 years. Regarding literacy, about 15% of the subjects were at the sixth grade level and about 18% had completed the ninth grade. More than half of the subjects (57.1%) completed the 12th grade and a quarter of the sample was at the university level. Almost all subjects were employed at the time of the interview (85.7%) and about half had some experience in the safety area (e.g., training in workplace safety procedures). In the past 3 years, a third of all participants had an occupational accident (33.9%) and about 20% of all subjects had experienced sick leaves as a consequence of occupational accidents. Almost half of the subjects confirmed a personal occupational accident experience at some point in their lives and about two thirds reported having had incidents (e.g., near misses or small harmless accidents) in the company they were working at the time of the data collection. 2.2. Data collection This study was based on a convenience sample of interviews performed by Psychology students. The supervisors gave training to the students in the interview protocol, followed all data collection during individual tutorial sessions (three for each interviewer) and at the end the quality of their work were assessed. Each student made a previous contact with the participants in order to book the future appointment. The majority of the interviews were carried out outside the participants’ organization (80%) and the remaining in a workplace context. The interview schedule was developed by the authors of this paper. The interviews performed were semistructured, including questions related to the participants’ employment situation, lay conceptions about occupational accidents and participants’ personal experience of hazardous events. The questions analyzed for this study were questions: ‘‘In your opinion, what is an occupational accident?” and” In your opinion, what are the causes for occupational accidents?” The first question was related to the definition of occupational accidents and the second was about the causes of occupational accidents. All interviews were recorded and subjected to fully transcription. 2.3. Data analysis A content analysis (with development of a system of categories) and a Homals (multiple correspondence analysis) were the procedures used to analyze the data. The content analysis used to study the causal attributions for occupational accidents was adapted from Gyekye (2003, p. 537). This author created a questionnaire divided into external and internal causal factors that influenced or contributed to occupational accidents, both presenting 15 subcategories to which the subjects answered in a five point scale. In our study, these subcategories were not rated in a scale but marked as absent/present in the content analysis. Although using the same strucure, there were only included the subcategories from Gyekye (2003) that were mentioned by the subjects. Ten external and eight internal subcategories were removed from the analysis. Regarding external attributions, the subcategories unsafe equipment, inadequate training, pressure from management and poor housekeeping were kept. It was necessary to add three external subcategories (mentioned by our subjects and not present at the original study): lack of inspection, lack of supervision and bad luck/destiny. Concerning the internal related subcategories, there were included lack of skill, attention lapse, misconduct, inexperience, carelessness, bad day and fatigue. In this case, it was not necessary to include further subcategories related to internal factors. This study introduced a new variable in the analysis, designated by primary attribution and defined as the first type of attribution mentioned by the subjects. Subjects commonly refer several factors to explain occupational accidents, mentioning both internal and external causes. This variable was related to the first causal factor referred by the subjects, conceptualised as their more immediate explanation. For a summary of the system developed and category dictionary see Table 1. The content analysis performed on the question about the definition of occupational accidents was developed in Niza et al. (2006), in a study about the definitions and operationalizations of work-related accidents used in empirical studies for a 10-year period (1995–2005). This system of categories is structured around four main categories: (1) occupational accident context, (2) occupational accident sudden characteristic,
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Table 1 Dictionary and frequencies related to causal attribution categories (adapted from Gyekye, 2003) Categories
Subcategories
Dictionary
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Primary attribution
Internal External
Causes associated with the worker Causes associated with the context
33 18
58.9 32.1
Internal attribution
Lack skill Attention lapse Misconduct Inexperience Carelessness Bad day Fatigue Total
Deficient knowledge about task Incorrect course of action selected Failure to use protective equipment Lack of adequate ability Exceeded prescribed limits Unusual misbehavior Reduced alertness
2 15 29 4 17 2 1 70
3.6 26.8 51.8 7.1 30.4 3.6 1.8
External attribution
Lack inspection Lack supervision Bad luck/destiny Unsafe equipment Inadequate training Pressure Poor housekeeping Total
No external safety assessment No management control Inevitability of accidents Faulty utensils and tools Deficient preparation and guidance Excessive work pace Lack of workplace tidiness
2 6 6 16 6 1 17 54
3.6 10.7 10.7 28.6 10.7 1.8 30.4
(3) occupational accident causes and (4) occupational accident consequences. The first category was related to what was happening at the time or where the accident occurred, and was divided in to three subcategories: (1a) at the workplace, (1b) during the performance of a task, and (1c) commuting to or from work. The second category was connected to the sudden or unexpected characteristic of the accident event. The third category was related to the causes of the occupational accident and was divided into three subcategories: (3a) lack of safe equipment, (3b) lack of working conditions, and (3c) lack of safety training. The last category was about the consequences of the accident and was splat into (3a) physical consequences and (3b) psychological consequences. This data analysis procedure was validated through an inter-judge consensus, in which two independent judges classified a random sample of answers according to the developed categories. There was an overall inter-judge consensus of 85%, suggesting the suitability of the system produced. In the last step, a Homals analysis was performed including the subcategories developed in the content analysis related to causal attributions and definitions, in addition to socio-demographic and accident experience variables. Homals is a Multiple Correspondence method for qualitative variables that finds patterns of association (proximity) in the data. This procedure organizes the information along two orthogonal dimensions, and the intersection of these two dimensions provides a combined pattern in four quadrants of aggregated data. 3. Results 3.1. Content analysis The frequencies for each subcategory related to causal attribution are shown in Table 1. The majority of the primary attributions made by the subjects were internal (33), and overall, the explanations mentioned were more internal (70) than external factors (54). This first result supports the fundamental attribution error previously mentioned. Within the internal factors, the causes more frequently referred were misconduct (51.8%), carelessness (30.4%) and attention lapse (26.8%), whereas the more frequent external factors pointed were poor housekeeping (30.4%) and unsafe equipment (28.6%). Taking all factors together, the results showed that there were five main causes referred by the subjects, of which three were internal and two external: misconduct (I), carelessness (I) and poor house keeping (E), unsafe equipment (E) and attention lapse (I).
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Table 2 Frequencies related to definition categories Categories
Subcategories
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Workplace Task Commuting
29 16 21 4
51.8 28.6 37.5 7.1
6
10.7
Lack of safe equipment Lack of work conditions Lack of safety training
16 12 9 2
28.6 21.4 16.1 3.6
Physical Psychological
23 20 5
41.1 35.7 8.9
Context
Sudden characteristic Causes
Consequences
The frequencies of each subcategory connected to definition are shown in Table 2. The most frequently mentioned categories were context (29) and consequences (23), followed by causes (16) and the sudden characteristic (6) of an accident. In the context category, the subcategories with higher frequencies were task performance (21) and workplace (16), while in the consequences category the results showed a focus on the physical aspect of the accidents (20). Regarding the category of causes, lack of safe equipment (12) and working conditions (9) were the subcategories more frequently mentioned. 3.2. Homals As previously mentioned, Homals provides an organization of the data along a two orthogonal dimensions structure (Table 3). Dimension 1 was associated with the definitions given, personal history of accidents and activity sector (Eigenvalue 0.142). On the other hand, Dimension 2 was connected to the recent accident experience and socio-demographic characteristics (Eigenvalue 0.111). Explanations for occupational accident were divided between the two dimensions. Table 4 provides a description of the coordinates that allows the placement of each variable in the analysis in this two dimensional space. The intersection of these two dimensions presents a four quadrants structure of the data. Fig. 1 presents an organized synthesis of the results found. The position of the variables correspondent to the coordinates presented in Table 4 is presented in structured representation. The definitions on the left-side quadrants in Fig. 1 were designated defensive because were focused almost exclusively on external causal factors, minimizing the personal responsibility of the employee. On the other hand, attributions named internal were situated in the right-side quadrants, with primary internal attribution and mentioning only one external factor, emphasising the personal role of the employee in the occupational accident. On a different perspective, the upper quadrants were characterised by simple attribution styles, because they only focused on a maximum of two causal factors. Finally, the lower quadrants reflected more complex attribution approaches, including both locus of control (internal and external) and several explanations. Regarding the nature of the definitions, they were classified as defensive (referring the causes and sudden characteristic of the accident) definitions or neutral (based on the accident’s consequences and context). When interpreting the definitions regarding their focus point, they could be centred in the fact that an occupational accident was most of all an accident (definitions based on consequences and characteristic) or in the perception that an occupational accident is specially something that happens at work and reporting it to the workplace (definitions related to the context and causes). Results showed that an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive explanations based on external factors, supporting Shaver’s (1970) defensive hypothesis. The results also showed that an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive definitions and defensive attributions (left-side
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Table 3 Discrimination measures in both dimensions Dimension 1
2
Context Context_workplace Context_task Context_commuting Sudden characteristic Causes Causes_lacksafety Causes_lackconditions Causes_lacktraining Consequences Consequences_physical Consequences_psychological Primary attribution E_lackinspection E_lack supervision E_badluck E_unsafeequipment E_inadequatetraining E_pressure E_poorhousekeeping I_lackskill I_attentionlapse I_misconduct I_inexperience I_badday I_carelessness I_fatigue
0.353 0.185 0.291 0.081 0.017 0.452 0.437 0.443 0.070 0.467 0.408 0.125 0.135 0.042 0.044 0.013 0.090 0.006 0.060 0.011 0.047 0.016 0.044 0.127 0.009 0.100 0.002
0.012 0.015 0.044 0.011 0.012 0.094 0.091 0.112 0.029 0.179 0.176 0.023 0.147 0.014 0.028 0.040 0.029 0.027 0.007 0.048 0.021 0.012 0.061 0.006 0.134 0.133 0.013
Accident ever Accident last 3 years Activity sector Sex Age Literacy Seniority Employment situation
0.217 0.126 0.289 0.051 0.094 0.082 0.184 0.037
0.194 0.218 0.253 0.083 0.508 0.282 0.471 0.184
Eingenvalue
0.142
0.111
quadrants). This result confirmed an association between explanations and definitions forms of sense-making. On one hand, workers who believe accidents are due to bad luck consider an occupational accident something that is sudden and unpredictable. On the other hand, workers who explain these accidents as a result of organizational weaknesses (e.g., unsafe equipment) defined an occupational accident in the same way: by its causes. Furthermore, the results also revealed a connection of definitions focusing on the accident with a simple attributional style, and definitions focusing on work with a more complex attributional style. Fig. 1 also showed an association of each profile of attribution and definition (providing real examples taken out of interviews) with the correspondent socio-demographic groups. The results propose that different work experiences and practices may be connected with diverse ways to define and explain occupational accidents. Workers at the beginning or end of their professional careers seem to understand accident in a simpler way than individuals at the peak of their work lives. The different work environments of services, construction or industry also appear to influence the perception of occupational accidents. This result strengthens the perspective of occupational accidents sense-making being an active and purposive process that relates to individuals according to their needs and motivations.
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Table 4 Coordinates of variables in Dimension 1 Dimension 1
2
Context Context_workplace Context_task Context_commuting Sudden characteristic Causes Causes_lacksafety Causes_lackconditions Causes_lacktraining Consequences Consequences_physical Consequences_psychological Primary internal attribution Primary external attribution E_lackinspection E_lack supervision E_badluck E_unsafeequipment E_inadequatetraining E_pressure E_poorhousekeeping I_lackskill I_attentionlapse I_misconduct I_inexperience I_badday I_carelessness I_fatigue
0.633 0.652 0.776 1.038 0.195 1.196 1.436 1.577 1.740 0.867 0.906 1.165 0.177 0.345 0.684 0.368 0.460 0.398 0.215 1.883 0.248 1.130 0.234 0.119 1.008 0.904 0.580 0.451
0.354 0.957 0.279 2.341 0.519 0.184 0.036 0.004 0.054 0.509 0.625 1.808 0.113 0.275 2.266 0.358 0.202 0.319 1.118 0.042 0.382 2.030 0.218 0.007 0.114 2.165 0.237 0.558
Accident over 3 years Accident last 3 years Education Health Other Services Men Women 20–25 years old 25–40 years old 40–45 years old 45–65 years old Seniority less than 2 years Seniority 2–5 years Seniority 5–10 years Seniority over 10 years Unemployed Retired
0.088 0.305 0.120 0.367 0.223 0.131 0.119 0.203 0.092 0.078 0.032 0.217 0.037 0.123 0.174 0.407 0.813
0.429 0.146 0.048 0.171 0.027 0.111 0.048 0.291 0.121 0.352 0.022 0.416 0.337 0.168 0.100 1.028 0.127
4. Discussion This study aimed at understanding the association of a personal occupational accident experience with the causal attributions and definitions given by workers, using interview data from a group of 56 participants. The results suggested that an occupational accident experience influences workers’ sense-making about this subject and this could be found in both causal attributions and definitions. With respect to causal attributions, an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive attributions (focused on factors external to workers), supporting the defensive attribution hypothesis. The
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Systematic representation of the different attribution and definition styles and their associated socio-demographic groups Accident over 3 years ago Retired 40-65 years old Men Industry Sector th 4 grade Seniority >10 years
SIMPLE EXPLANATIONS ACCIDENT RELATED DEFINITIONS
No accident Unemployed 9th/ 12th grade
Attribution: Bad luck (E), Bad day (I) “An accident just happens”
Attribution: lack of skill (I), inexperience (I) “Accidents happen because people don’t know their job”
Definition: Characteristics “An accident is something unpredictable”
Definition: Consequences “An occupational accident can be from a small scratch to death”
DEFENSIVE EXPLANATIONS DEFENSIVE DEFINITIONS
INTERNAL EXPLANATIONS NEUTRAL DEFINITIONS
Attribution: Unsafe equipment (E), Management Pressure (E), Inadequate Training (E), Poor Housekeeping (E), Lack inspection (E) “There are several causes to accidents but basically accidents happen because there is no safe equipment and facilities”
Attribution: Misconduct (I), Carelessness (I), Attention Lapse (I), Fatigue (I), Lack supervision (E) “Accidents happen because people don’t pay attention and are irresponsible. But there can be other reasons”
Definition: Causes “An accident is something that happens because of lack of working conditions”
Definition: Context “An occupational accident is an accident that happens in the workplace”
Accident less than 3 years ago Construction Sector 6th grade Seniority 5-10 years
COMPLEX EXPLANATIONS WORK RELATED DEFINITIONS
No accident Recently employed 20-40 years old Women Services Sector
Fig. 1. Systematic representation of the different attribution and definition styles and their associated socio-demographic groups.
consistency of this hypothesis suggests that understanding the possible ways this pattern of attribution may take is also very important. Although all victims seem to share the same style of explanation, there were differences in the attributions’ levels of complexity. This result proposes that victims undertake distinct defensive strategies or process the information differently according to their specific characteristics (age, seniority) and distance from the event (recently or more than 3 years ago). Moreover, the results reflected a predominance of internal factors, supporting other results about the fundamental attribution error and the internality norm (e.g., Beauvois and Dubois, 1988). Overall, subjects mentioned more internal factors when explaining occupational accidents, regardless of their past accident experience (victims and non-victims). This defensive pattern was also found in the definitions of occupational accidents. The defensive definitions are characterized by reference to the sudden nature of the accident or organizational weaknesses that caused it. They were also named defensive (as attributions) because they reflect a particular focus of workers on the features of accident that go beyond their personal control. This description of occupational accidents is associated with defensive attributions, shedding light on the combined sense-making process of defining and explaining events. The recognition of the association between these two reasoning forms may prevent negative
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information cycles in the organizations: employees who believe an accident is something unpreventable and due to bad luck will be less likely to take protective measures and to accurately report the event. If the need for prevention is not raised, workers may keep thinking that accidents are caused by fate or organizational flaws and will not report accidents caused by their own misconduct. This study presents one major limitation. Despite the structured questions format, the interviews were performed by several Psychology students, more inexperienced that senior researchers in the collection of the data. However, possible biases arising from this data collection procedure were minimized through the complete record and transcription of the interviews. Nevertheless, our results have important methodological, theoretical and practical implications (Rynes et al., 2005). At the methodological level, our study provided a qualitative analysis of the causal attribution combined with the definitions of occupational accidents that was inexistent in the literature. There are several examples of studies about causal attributions of accidents, but most are based on quantitative scales that are presented to the participants in a predetermined format. Our study offered the possibility to workers to express their subjective views without the limitations of a fixed and prearranged response instrument and the Homals method permitted the analysis of the richness of the answers. At the theoretical level, this study highlighted the variability of the sense-making differences among employees and suggested that the study of the lay interpretation of occupational accidents should pay attention to these particularities. Furthermore, it included the analysis of the definitions of occupational accidents and connected them with causal attributions in a larger lay epistemology framework (Bar-Tal and Kruglanski, 1988). To our knowledge, this the first study to introduce definitions, combining the analysis of both processes and the results have shown that this was an important advance to research. Moreover, our study suggested the mentioned possibility to expand the predictions of Shaver’s defensive hypothesis, including differences in the type and complexity of the victims’ explanations. According to Deschamps and Cle´mence (2000) there exists a great variability of causes within the internal and external categories. The two groups sharing external attributions (defensive) present some differences: the older group has an ‘‘it was just an accident” perspective (Woodcock, 1995) with a (simple and defensive) bad luck explanations, while the other group numbered a variety of external factors present in the workplace (complex and defensive). On the other hand, an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive definitions, focusing on the accident’s characteristics and causes. It was mostly defined as something unexpected by the older and more senior workers and defined as an event caused by organizational factors by the younger and lower seniority workers. At the practical level, this study has important implications for organizational accidents record and prevention programs. The official organizational definition of occupational accident is likely to be more similar to some groups of employees than others, and this distance may interfere with the company process of collecting and registering occupational accidents data. To an employee that thinks an occupational accident is an event resulting from his personal misconduct at work, a commuting accident may not be considered an occupational accident. Furthermore, if a worker defines an occupational accident as the result of poor working conditions, an injury due to a personal attention lapse will probably not be regarded as an event worth reporting. All these possible variations may leave many occupational accidents unrecorded and should be taken into account in a precise collection of information about these hazardous occurrences. Moreover, the explanations given to the accident influence worker’s future prevention behavior and the anticipation of this process are important for corrective measures. The answer employees give to uncertain and dangerous events is congruent with the perceived causes and the careful assessment of the variety of attributions among workers can increase the likelihood of safety promotion programs success.
Acknowledgements This study was funded by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology – Portugal) with reference FCT.PIQS/PSI/50070/2003. For more on this project see Silva et al. (2006,2007).
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Safety Science 46 (2008) 959–971 www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci
Occupational accident experience: Association with workers’ accident explanation and definition Cla´udia Niza a,*, Sı´lvia Silva b, Maria Luı´sa Lima b a
b
London School of Economics (LSE), Operational Research Department, Portugal Street, London, UK Centro de Investigacßa˜o e Intervencßa˜o Social (CIS)/Instituto Superior de Cieˆncias do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), Departamento de Psicologia Social e Organizacional, Av. Forcßas Armadas, Ed. ISCTE, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract Problem: The experience of an occupational accident, as a harmful and unexpected event, may elicit a process of construction of meaning. However, research has provided inconsistent results regarding to the role of such an experience in posterior sense-making. This article aims at understanding the association of an occupational accident experience with the explanation and definition given by workers for such events. Method: Fifty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted with workers from several sectors. This data was subject to content analysis and HOMALS (Multiple Correspondence Analysis). Results: An accident experience was associated with defensive explanations (focused on causes external to workers) and defensive definitions (highlighting the sudden nature of accidents and organizational weaknesses). Discussion: The study of the construction of meaning about accidents and its variability is highly relevant for understanding posterior preventive behavior and the accuracy in the report of future occupational accidents. Impact on industry: Organizations should be aware of discrepancies in conceptions and interpretations among employees about occupational accidents when planning prevention programs or improvement of accident data registration. Ó 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Occupational accident; Accident experience; Lay explanation; Definition; Prevention
1. Problem Occupational accidents represent a serious problem to society, with statistical data alerting to the high frequency and severity of these events every year (e.g., ILO, 2002). Research on occupational accidents has exposed the negative impact these hazards have on their victims, families and co-workers (e.g., Dembe, 2004), with both consequences for cognition and behavior (see Goncßalves et al., 2008). The role of a personal accident experience in the way individuals think about these hazardous events is not well-established in literature. On one hand, some studies have shown that an accident experience has an *
Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 217903079; fax: +351 217903962. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Niza), [email protected] (S. Silva), [email protected] (M.L. Lima).
0925-7535/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2007.11.015
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important impact on individuals’ subsequent sense-making. Shaver (1970), based on the work of Walster (1966), developed the defensive attribution hypothesis which claimed that the victims of accidents tended to explain the event in a way that personal responsibility is minimized. Further supporting results (e.g., Salminen, 1992) showed that, when explaining an accident, workers tended to focus on the circumstances of the accident, whereas supervisors tended to blame the employees as the source of the deviation from the normal work routine. This attribution difference is the most replicated result regarding the impact of a personal accident experience on sense-making (e.g., Kouabenan, 2000c, 2001b). Gyekye and Salminen (2006) demonstrated that this tendency is also shown by coworkers who empathize with the victim of the accident. The authors identified three categories of coworkers in their relation to the accident (situationally relevant, personally relevant and non-relevant) and concluded that witnesses who had some perception of personal or situational similarity with the victim attribute less responsibility to the hazarded worker. However, other empirical findings failed to find an association between accident occurrence and reasoning. Gyekye (2003) in a study about the attribution of causes for occupational accidents in both dangerous (miners) and non-dangerous (textile employees) work environments, concluded that victims perceived workers’ personal characteristics to be primarily responsible for accident occurrences. On the other hand, Kouabenan (1998) in a study about the beliefs and perceptions of risk related to accidents concluded that ‘‘the true effect of accident experience (. . .) remains to be established” (p. 251) as he found no connection between a prior accident history and specific beliefs related to accidents. Moreover, Girasek (1999) explored the meaning of the word accident with the purpose of understanding the lay notions of preventability and predictability related to accidents [e.g., when you hear the work accident, do you usually think that what happened could have been predicted (prevented)?]. Within the socio-demographic information collected from participants (e.g., sex, age), the author included data from prior accident experience but concluded that previous victims did not differ significantly from non-victims in the interpretations given to the word accident. Understanding the construction of meaning individuals make of their experience can be related to the study of lay epistemology or the process of knowledge acquisition and organization of laypeople (Effler, 1984). In the case of hazardous events, the attribution of causes is the usual framework (Silvester and Chapman, 1997). However, causal attribution is included in a larger scheme of sense-making of the world and the search of causes to events is just one of the forms through which individuals understand their social environment (Pernanen, 1993). As exposed by Bar-Tal and Kruglanski (1988), the theory of lay epistemology has two distinct but interrelated categories: on one hand, identification and classification of concepts, and on the other hand, the connection between concepts, where the search of causality is included. Following this perspective, the definition of concepts or searching for ‘‘what is it” and not just ‘‘why is it” is another important way of constructing meaning (e.g., Condit et al., 2004). Moreover, as these two categories are logically related (Bar-Tal and Kruglanski, 1988), it is plausible to think that these two processes may be connected in a way that the causes individuals give to explain an action or event may be coupled with the definition they provide for it. We intend to clarify this relationship, focusing on the analysis of the impact of a worker’s accident experience on both the causal attributions and definitions of occupational accidents. 1.1. Causal attribution for occupational accidents Attribution activity is the process of sense-making whereby the individuals attempt to identify the causes that are present in their daily lives (Deschamps and Cle´mence, 2000) either about feelings, behaviors or events (e.g., Kelley and Michela, 1980). The foremost findings in attribution literature are the actor/observer distinction (Jones and Nisbett, 1971) and the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). Jones and Nisbett (1971) exposed the attribution differences between actors and observers to an event, and presented the explanation that distinct personal involvement and access to information tended to make actors more focused on external causes (associated with the context of the situation) and observers on internal causes (connected to the individuals). Regarding the other important finding, Ross (1977) defined what was called the fundamental attribution error, characterised by the fact that people generally tend to attribute the causes of events to the individuals involved in them, neglecting the importance of situational factors.
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This causal attribution framework has been applied to the study of hazardous events in the workplace, namely burnout (Moore, 2000), alcohol-related accidents (Pernanen, 1993) or occupational accident (e.g. Melia` et al., 2001) because these kind of rare or overwhelming events at work make employees stop and ask why (Silvester and Chapman, 1997). Particularly regarding occupational accidents, the causal search refers to the process of determining why an accident has occurred. The outcome of this search is the causal attribution: the individual’s explanation of what caused the accident. Despite the consistency in the aforementioned attribution differences between victims and observers of accidents, Kouabenan (1999, 2001a) mentioned the existence of other factors that could influence the lay explanations of accidents. On one hand, age was shown to have an influence in employees’ explanations to occupational accidents (e.g., Melia` et al., 2001), being older workers more likely to attribute the event to external factors and younger workers to refer internal attributions. On the other hand, Gherardi et al. (1998) referred that a higher educational level was associated with internal attributions, by contrast with external attributions given mainly by low literate individuals. Kouabenan et al. (2001) showed that the sex and the hierarchical level of individuals played a significant role in the attributions for an accident. These authors concluded that subjects with a high hierarchical position made more attributions blaming the victim than did subjects in a subordinate level. Moreover, sex interacted with the hierarchical position in a way that male supervisors made more internal attributions but there were no differences among women of different levels. At an organizational level of analysis, Hofman and Stetzer (1998) referred safety climate as a moderator of the common defensive attribution pattern found in victims. Safety climate as the perceptions of events, practices and behaviors related to safety in the organization (Silva et al., 2004) was shown to attenuate the tendency for defensive attributions, resulting that individuals working in a positive safety climate tended to make more internal attributions than employees in a negative safety climate organization. Regarding organizational culture, research has shown that different communities of practices and shared knowledge tend to give different explanations to occupational accidents. In a study on the construction sector, Gherardi et al. (1998) concluded that engineers explained accidents as abnormal events resulting from the disrespect of safety rules, while foremen justified the occurrence of accidents as being an expected result of the dangerousness of the work environment. Lastly, Kouabenan (2001) focused on the impact of national cultures on lay explanations, concluding that western individualistic societies present more internal attributions to accidents, while more collectivist societies tend to offer more explanations related to external factors. The existence of several variables that have been shown to play a role in the attribution process suggests that the attribution of specific causes to accidents may vary according to personal characteristics, organizational context or cultural variables. It is a dynamic and purposive process that provides individuals with an internal sense of security and order. This subject is of extreme importance because, regardless of the actual causes of particular accidents, it is the explanation given by individuals that determine their emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses to the accident (Woodcook, 1995). The application of attribution theory to occupational accidents is highly relevant because identifying the causes of accidents is a way of structuring the situation and relating it to one’s motivations and needs (Pernanen, 1993) and a fundamental prerequisite for preventive action (e.g., Kouabenan, 1998). There are several studies that acknowledge the importance of understanding the attribution of causes to events (e.g., Butchart et al., 2000; Kouabenan, 2000a) for prevention. Individuals adjust their future behavior to the perceived causes of accidents and the belief of preventability is central to prevention actions (Poole, 1987). Moreover, if naı¨ve causal explanations for accidents are communicated, accidents countermeasures could be better understood and more easily accepted because they would integrate the cognitive and emotional functioning of those directly involved in their execution (Kouabenan, 2000b). 1.2. Definition of occupational accident From the perspective of international organisms, ILO (2002), in its worldwide report on Recording and Notification of Occupational Accidents and Diseases, concluded that there was a great variety of occupational accidents definitions among countries, ranging from a simple reference in legislation to accidents occurring in the workplace (e.g. Botswana, UK) to countries with a more precise definition (e.g. USA). Similarly, Eurostat in its Questionnaire on National Declaration Systems of Accidents at Work, identified variability in accident definition as a factor that could compromise the comparability of data on national occupational accidents.
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From an academic perspective, there are very few studies that have analysed the importance of occupational accidents definition. In a study on hospital service workers, Weddle (1996) found that of all workers recalling having been injured in the previous year, about 40% did not report one or more injuries. For most of these cases, subjects said that they did not consider that particular harmful event to be an occupational accident. On the other hand, Conroy and Sciortino (1997) evaluated whether different definitions used for occupational deaths would identify different cases and proposed a definition for occupational injury. According to them, injury is consensually defined by researchers as ‘‘tissue or body damage or loss of function of a body part” (p. 274) but the problem is the occupational prefix as it ‘‘is more difficult to define and there is no standard definition used consistently by researchers. Definitions vary widely and depend upon the data source and reason for identifying cases of occupational injuries” (p. 274). These authors provided evidence suggesting that counts of occupational injury fatalities based on surveillance systems using restricted definitions differ from systems using broader definitions for occupational injury death. In a study by Saldan˜a et al. (2003) there were examined the differences and similarities between several possible ways to define occupational accidents. The authors mentioned that there exist two different views on what constitutes an occupational accident: the first integrates all events, with or without injuries, whereas in the second, occupational accidents are only those that result in injury consequences (naming the events that do not result in injuries as incidents). These authors defended the use of a wide definition that should cover all events with potential to cause damages (personal or organisational) as a more valid analysis framework than a narrow definition of occupational accidents. As suggested by Pernanen (1993), the lack of interest or awareness about the importance of the definition of the concept accident (reflected in the scarce studies on this subject) may be due to the fact that most researchers think of occupational accident as a well-defined expression, with an equally shared meaning and find no need for further clarification. However, a study on the definitions presented in occupational health and safety literature (Niza et al., 2006) showed that there are a number of different definitions in use, depending on the authors’ scientific domain and nationality. Moreover, there are noteworthy examples from studies about the public sense-making (e.g., Condit et al., 2004; Chapman et al., 2003) that acknowledge the importance of studying the meaning of concepts to individuals because there is evidence of a significant variety of interpretations for the same words. These discrepancies in the definition and interpretation of what is an occupational accident may obstruct an effective communication between workers, employers and governmental organizations. The definition used by institutional entities may not be shared by organizations, and organizations may have an official definition that is very different from what its employees think an occupational accident is. There is a potential space for concept misunderstanding that may create gaps between the number of accidents that occur and the number present in official statistics. 1.3. Aim of the study Insofar, research has shown that different people may perceive and interpret the same accident in different ways and that an accident experience has some impact on posterior sense-making. Although there is a consistent amount of evidence about the type of explanations victims of accidents give, it is not clear the impact this experience has on the definition of the event and how these two sense-making processes may be connected. As shown in literature (e.g., Bar-Tal & Kruglanski, 1988) the combined study of these subjects is fundamental to understand the overall lay reasoning about occupational accidents. Given these considerations, in the present study we aim at understanding the association of a personal occupational accident experience with the causal attributions and definitions given by workers. 2. Method 2.1. Sample The sample was composed by 56 subjects (29 women and 27 men), with ages ranging from 20 to 64 years old (average 36.98). The participants worked in the services (63.6% of which 17.9% in health and 8.9% in education) or industry (35.7% of which 7.1% in construction) sectors. Seniority in the organizations had a min-
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imum of 6 months and a maximum of 32 years, with an average of about 8 years. Regarding literacy, about 15% of the subjects were at the sixth grade level and about 18% had completed the ninth grade. More than half of the subjects (57.1%) completed the 12th grade and a quarter of the sample was at the university level. Almost all subjects were employed at the time of the interview (85.7%) and about half had some experience in the safety area (e.g., training in workplace safety procedures). In the past 3 years, a third of all participants had an occupational accident (33.9%) and about 20% of all subjects had experienced sick leaves as a consequence of occupational accidents. Almost half of the subjects confirmed a personal occupational accident experience at some point in their lives and about two thirds reported having had incidents (e.g., near misses or small harmless accidents) in the company they were working at the time of the data collection. 2.2. Data collection This study was based on a convenience sample of interviews performed by Psychology students. The supervisors gave training to the students in the interview protocol, followed all data collection during individual tutorial sessions (three for each interviewer) and at the end the quality of their work were assessed. Each student made a previous contact with the participants in order to book the future appointment. The majority of the interviews were carried out outside the participants’ organization (80%) and the remaining in a workplace context. The interview schedule was developed by the authors of this paper. The interviews performed were semistructured, including questions related to the participants’ employment situation, lay conceptions about occupational accidents and participants’ personal experience of hazardous events. The questions analyzed for this study were questions: ‘‘In your opinion, what is an occupational accident?” and” In your opinion, what are the causes for occupational accidents?” The first question was related to the definition of occupational accidents and the second was about the causes of occupational accidents. All interviews were recorded and subjected to fully transcription. 2.3. Data analysis A content analysis (with development of a system of categories) and a Homals (multiple correspondence analysis) were the procedures used to analyze the data. The content analysis used to study the causal attributions for occupational accidents was adapted from Gyekye (2003, p. 537). This author created a questionnaire divided into external and internal causal factors that influenced or contributed to occupational accidents, both presenting 15 subcategories to which the subjects answered in a five point scale. In our study, these subcategories were not rated in a scale but marked as absent/present in the content analysis. Although using the same strucure, there were only included the subcategories from Gyekye (2003) that were mentioned by the subjects. Ten external and eight internal subcategories were removed from the analysis. Regarding external attributions, the subcategories unsafe equipment, inadequate training, pressure from management and poor housekeeping were kept. It was necessary to add three external subcategories (mentioned by our subjects and not present at the original study): lack of inspection, lack of supervision and bad luck/destiny. Concerning the internal related subcategories, there were included lack of skill, attention lapse, misconduct, inexperience, carelessness, bad day and fatigue. In this case, it was not necessary to include further subcategories related to internal factors. This study introduced a new variable in the analysis, designated by primary attribution and defined as the first type of attribution mentioned by the subjects. Subjects commonly refer several factors to explain occupational accidents, mentioning both internal and external causes. This variable was related to the first causal factor referred by the subjects, conceptualised as their more immediate explanation. For a summary of the system developed and category dictionary see Table 1. The content analysis performed on the question about the definition of occupational accidents was developed in Niza et al. (2006), in a study about the definitions and operationalizations of work-related accidents used in empirical studies for a 10-year period (1995–2005). This system of categories is structured around four main categories: (1) occupational accident context, (2) occupational accident sudden characteristic,
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Table 1 Dictionary and frequencies related to causal attribution categories (adapted from Gyekye, 2003) Categories
Subcategories
Dictionary
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Primary attribution
Internal External
Causes associated with the worker Causes associated with the context
33 18
58.9 32.1
Internal attribution
Lack skill Attention lapse Misconduct Inexperience Carelessness Bad day Fatigue Total
Deficient knowledge about task Incorrect course of action selected Failure to use protective equipment Lack of adequate ability Exceeded prescribed limits Unusual misbehavior Reduced alertness
2 15 29 4 17 2 1 70
3.6 26.8 51.8 7.1 30.4 3.6 1.8
External attribution
Lack inspection Lack supervision Bad luck/destiny Unsafe equipment Inadequate training Pressure Poor housekeeping Total
No external safety assessment No management control Inevitability of accidents Faulty utensils and tools Deficient preparation and guidance Excessive work pace Lack of workplace tidiness
2 6 6 16 6 1 17 54
3.6 10.7 10.7 28.6 10.7 1.8 30.4
(3) occupational accident causes and (4) occupational accident consequences. The first category was related to what was happening at the time or where the accident occurred, and was divided in to three subcategories: (1a) at the workplace, (1b) during the performance of a task, and (1c) commuting to or from work. The second category was connected to the sudden or unexpected characteristic of the accident event. The third category was related to the causes of the occupational accident and was divided into three subcategories: (3a) lack of safe equipment, (3b) lack of working conditions, and (3c) lack of safety training. The last category was about the consequences of the accident and was splat into (3a) physical consequences and (3b) psychological consequences. This data analysis procedure was validated through an inter-judge consensus, in which two independent judges classified a random sample of answers according to the developed categories. There was an overall inter-judge consensus of 85%, suggesting the suitability of the system produced. In the last step, a Homals analysis was performed including the subcategories developed in the content analysis related to causal attributions and definitions, in addition to socio-demographic and accident experience variables. Homals is a Multiple Correspondence method for qualitative variables that finds patterns of association (proximity) in the data. This procedure organizes the information along two orthogonal dimensions, and the intersection of these two dimensions provides a combined pattern in four quadrants of aggregated data. 3. Results 3.1. Content analysis The frequencies for each subcategory related to causal attribution are shown in Table 1. The majority of the primary attributions made by the subjects were internal (33), and overall, the explanations mentioned were more internal (70) than external factors (54). This first result supports the fundamental attribution error previously mentioned. Within the internal factors, the causes more frequently referred were misconduct (51.8%), carelessness (30.4%) and attention lapse (26.8%), whereas the more frequent external factors pointed were poor housekeeping (30.4%) and unsafe equipment (28.6%). Taking all factors together, the results showed that there were five main causes referred by the subjects, of which three were internal and two external: misconduct (I), carelessness (I) and poor house keeping (E), unsafe equipment (E) and attention lapse (I).
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Table 2 Frequencies related to definition categories Categories
Subcategories
Absolute frequency
Relative frequency
Workplace Task Commuting
29 16 21 4
51.8 28.6 37.5 7.1
6
10.7
Lack of safe equipment Lack of work conditions Lack of safety training
16 12 9 2
28.6 21.4 16.1 3.6
Physical Psychological
23 20 5
41.1 35.7 8.9
Context
Sudden characteristic Causes
Consequences
The frequencies of each subcategory connected to definition are shown in Table 2. The most frequently mentioned categories were context (29) and consequences (23), followed by causes (16) and the sudden characteristic (6) of an accident. In the context category, the subcategories with higher frequencies were task performance (21) and workplace (16), while in the consequences category the results showed a focus on the physical aspect of the accidents (20). Regarding the category of causes, lack of safe equipment (12) and working conditions (9) were the subcategories more frequently mentioned. 3.2. Homals As previously mentioned, Homals provides an organization of the data along a two orthogonal dimensions structure (Table 3). Dimension 1 was associated with the definitions given, personal history of accidents and activity sector (Eigenvalue 0.142). On the other hand, Dimension 2 was connected to the recent accident experience and socio-demographic characteristics (Eigenvalue 0.111). Explanations for occupational accident were divided between the two dimensions. Table 4 provides a description of the coordinates that allows the placement of each variable in the analysis in this two dimensional space. The intersection of these two dimensions presents a four quadrants structure of the data. Fig. 1 presents an organized synthesis of the results found. The position of the variables correspondent to the coordinates presented in Table 4 is presented in structured representation. The definitions on the left-side quadrants in Fig. 1 were designated defensive because were focused almost exclusively on external causal factors, minimizing the personal responsibility of the employee. On the other hand, attributions named internal were situated in the right-side quadrants, with primary internal attribution and mentioning only one external factor, emphasising the personal role of the employee in the occupational accident. On a different perspective, the upper quadrants were characterised by simple attribution styles, because they only focused on a maximum of two causal factors. Finally, the lower quadrants reflected more complex attribution approaches, including both locus of control (internal and external) and several explanations. Regarding the nature of the definitions, they were classified as defensive (referring the causes and sudden characteristic of the accident) definitions or neutral (based on the accident’s consequences and context). When interpreting the definitions regarding their focus point, they could be centred in the fact that an occupational accident was most of all an accident (definitions based on consequences and characteristic) or in the perception that an occupational accident is specially something that happens at work and reporting it to the workplace (definitions related to the context and causes). Results showed that an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive explanations based on external factors, supporting Shaver’s (1970) defensive hypothesis. The results also showed that an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive definitions and defensive attributions (left-side
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Table 3 Discrimination measures in both dimensions Dimension 1
2
Context Context_workplace Context_task Context_commuting Sudden characteristic Causes Causes_lacksafety Causes_lackconditions Causes_lacktraining Consequences Consequences_physical Consequences_psychological Primary attribution E_lackinspection E_lack supervision E_badluck E_unsafeequipment E_inadequatetraining E_pressure E_poorhousekeeping I_lackskill I_attentionlapse I_misconduct I_inexperience I_badday I_carelessness I_fatigue
0.353 0.185 0.291 0.081 0.017 0.452 0.437 0.443 0.070 0.467 0.408 0.125 0.135 0.042 0.044 0.013 0.090 0.006 0.060 0.011 0.047 0.016 0.044 0.127 0.009 0.100 0.002
0.012 0.015 0.044 0.011 0.012 0.094 0.091 0.112 0.029 0.179 0.176 0.023 0.147 0.014 0.028 0.040 0.029 0.027 0.007 0.048 0.021 0.012 0.061 0.006 0.134 0.133 0.013
Accident ever Accident last 3 years Activity sector Sex Age Literacy Seniority Employment situation
0.217 0.126 0.289 0.051 0.094 0.082 0.184 0.037
0.194 0.218 0.253 0.083 0.508 0.282 0.471 0.184
Eingenvalue
0.142
0.111
quadrants). This result confirmed an association between explanations and definitions forms of sense-making. On one hand, workers who believe accidents are due to bad luck consider an occupational accident something that is sudden and unpredictable. On the other hand, workers who explain these accidents as a result of organizational weaknesses (e.g., unsafe equipment) defined an occupational accident in the same way: by its causes. Furthermore, the results also revealed a connection of definitions focusing on the accident with a simple attributional style, and definitions focusing on work with a more complex attributional style. Fig. 1 also showed an association of each profile of attribution and definition (providing real examples taken out of interviews) with the correspondent socio-demographic groups. The results propose that different work experiences and practices may be connected with diverse ways to define and explain occupational accidents. Workers at the beginning or end of their professional careers seem to understand accident in a simpler way than individuals at the peak of their work lives. The different work environments of services, construction or industry also appear to influence the perception of occupational accidents. This result strengthens the perspective of occupational accidents sense-making being an active and purposive process that relates to individuals according to their needs and motivations.
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Table 4 Coordinates of variables in Dimension 1 Dimension 1
2
Context Context_workplace Context_task Context_commuting Sudden characteristic Causes Causes_lacksafety Causes_lackconditions Causes_lacktraining Consequences Consequences_physical Consequences_psychological Primary internal attribution Primary external attribution E_lackinspection E_lack supervision E_badluck E_unsafeequipment E_inadequatetraining E_pressure E_poorhousekeeping I_lackskill I_attentionlapse I_misconduct I_inexperience I_badday I_carelessness I_fatigue
0.633 0.652 0.776 1.038 0.195 1.196 1.436 1.577 1.740 0.867 0.906 1.165 0.177 0.345 0.684 0.368 0.460 0.398 0.215 1.883 0.248 1.130 0.234 0.119 1.008 0.904 0.580 0.451
0.354 0.957 0.279 2.341 0.519 0.184 0.036 0.004 0.054 0.509 0.625 1.808 0.113 0.275 2.266 0.358 0.202 0.319 1.118 0.042 0.382 2.030 0.218 0.007 0.114 2.165 0.237 0.558
Accident over 3 years Accident last 3 years Education Health Other Services Men Women 20–25 years old 25–40 years old 40–45 years old 45–65 years old Seniority less than 2 years Seniority 2–5 years Seniority 5–10 years Seniority over 10 years Unemployed Retired
0.088 0.305 0.120 0.367 0.223 0.131 0.119 0.203 0.092 0.078 0.032 0.217 0.037 0.123 0.174 0.407 0.813
0.429 0.146 0.048 0.171 0.027 0.111 0.048 0.291 0.121 0.352 0.022 0.416 0.337 0.168 0.100 1.028 0.127
4. Discussion This study aimed at understanding the association of a personal occupational accident experience with the causal attributions and definitions given by workers, using interview data from a group of 56 participants. The results suggested that an occupational accident experience influences workers’ sense-making about this subject and this could be found in both causal attributions and definitions. With respect to causal attributions, an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive attributions (focused on factors external to workers), supporting the defensive attribution hypothesis. The
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Systematic representation of the different attribution and definition styles and their associated socio-demographic groups Accident over 3 years ago Retired 40-65 years old Men Industry Sector th 4 grade Seniority >10 years
SIMPLE EXPLANATIONS ACCIDENT RELATED DEFINITIONS
No accident Unemployed 9th/ 12th grade
Attribution: Bad luck (E), Bad day (I) “An accident just happens”
Attribution: lack of skill (I), inexperience (I) “Accidents happen because people don’t know their job”
Definition: Characteristics “An accident is something unpredictable”
Definition: Consequences “An occupational accident can be from a small scratch to death”
DEFENSIVE EXPLANATIONS DEFENSIVE DEFINITIONS
INTERNAL EXPLANATIONS NEUTRAL DEFINITIONS
Attribution: Unsafe equipment (E), Management Pressure (E), Inadequate Training (E), Poor Housekeeping (E), Lack inspection (E) “There are several causes to accidents but basically accidents happen because there is no safe equipment and facilities”
Attribution: Misconduct (I), Carelessness (I), Attention Lapse (I), Fatigue (I), Lack supervision (E) “Accidents happen because people don’t pay attention and are irresponsible. But there can be other reasons”
Definition: Causes “An accident is something that happens because of lack of working conditions”
Definition: Context “An occupational accident is an accident that happens in the workplace”
Accident less than 3 years ago Construction Sector 6th grade Seniority 5-10 years
COMPLEX EXPLANATIONS WORK RELATED DEFINITIONS
No accident Recently employed 20-40 years old Women Services Sector
Fig. 1. Systematic representation of the different attribution and definition styles and their associated socio-demographic groups.
consistency of this hypothesis suggests that understanding the possible ways this pattern of attribution may take is also very important. Although all victims seem to share the same style of explanation, there were differences in the attributions’ levels of complexity. This result proposes that victims undertake distinct defensive strategies or process the information differently according to their specific characteristics (age, seniority) and distance from the event (recently or more than 3 years ago). Moreover, the results reflected a predominance of internal factors, supporting other results about the fundamental attribution error and the internality norm (e.g., Beauvois and Dubois, 1988). Overall, subjects mentioned more internal factors when explaining occupational accidents, regardless of their past accident experience (victims and non-victims). This defensive pattern was also found in the definitions of occupational accidents. The defensive definitions are characterized by reference to the sudden nature of the accident or organizational weaknesses that caused it. They were also named defensive (as attributions) because they reflect a particular focus of workers on the features of accident that go beyond their personal control. This description of occupational accidents is associated with defensive attributions, shedding light on the combined sense-making process of defining and explaining events. The recognition of the association between these two reasoning forms may prevent negative
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information cycles in the organizations: employees who believe an accident is something unpreventable and due to bad luck will be less likely to take protective measures and to accurately report the event. If the need for prevention is not raised, workers may keep thinking that accidents are caused by fate or organizational flaws and will not report accidents caused by their own misconduct. This study presents one major limitation. Despite the structured questions format, the interviews were performed by several Psychology students, more inexperienced that senior researchers in the collection of the data. However, possible biases arising from this data collection procedure were minimized through the complete record and transcription of the interviews. Nevertheless, our results have important methodological, theoretical and practical implications (Rynes et al., 2005). At the methodological level, our study provided a qualitative analysis of the causal attribution combined with the definitions of occupational accidents that was inexistent in the literature. There are several examples of studies about causal attributions of accidents, but most are based on quantitative scales that are presented to the participants in a predetermined format. Our study offered the possibility to workers to express their subjective views without the limitations of a fixed and prearranged response instrument and the Homals method permitted the analysis of the richness of the answers. At the theoretical level, this study highlighted the variability of the sense-making differences among employees and suggested that the study of the lay interpretation of occupational accidents should pay attention to these particularities. Furthermore, it included the analysis of the definitions of occupational accidents and connected them with causal attributions in a larger lay epistemology framework (Bar-Tal and Kruglanski, 1988). To our knowledge, this the first study to introduce definitions, combining the analysis of both processes and the results have shown that this was an important advance to research. Moreover, our study suggested the mentioned possibility to expand the predictions of Shaver’s defensive hypothesis, including differences in the type and complexity of the victims’ explanations. According to Deschamps and Cle´mence (2000) there exists a great variability of causes within the internal and external categories. The two groups sharing external attributions (defensive) present some differences: the older group has an ‘‘it was just an accident” perspective (Woodcock, 1995) with a (simple and defensive) bad luck explanations, while the other group numbered a variety of external factors present in the workplace (complex and defensive). On the other hand, an occupational accident experience was associated with defensive definitions, focusing on the accident’s characteristics and causes. It was mostly defined as something unexpected by the older and more senior workers and defined as an event caused by organizational factors by the younger and lower seniority workers. At the practical level, this study has important implications for organizational accidents record and prevention programs. The official organizational definition of occupational accident is likely to be more similar to some groups of employees than others, and this distance may interfere with the company process of collecting and registering occupational accidents data. To an employee that thinks an occupational accident is an event resulting from his personal misconduct at work, a commuting accident may not be considered an occupational accident. Furthermore, if a worker defines an occupational accident as the result of poor working conditions, an injury due to a personal attention lapse will probably not be regarded as an event worth reporting. All these possible variations may leave many occupational accidents unrecorded and should be taken into account in a precise collection of information about these hazardous occurrences. Moreover, the explanations given to the accident influence worker’s future prevention behavior and the anticipation of this process are important for corrective measures. The answer employees give to uncertain and dangerous events is congruent with the perceived causes and the careful assessment of the variety of attributions among workers can increase the likelihood of safety promotion programs success.
Acknowledgements This study was funded by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology – Portugal) with reference FCT.PIQS/PSI/50070/2003. For more on this project see Silva et al. (2006,2007).
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