Dr. Joseph Allen, Dr. Matthew Thiese, Emilee Eden, Katie Castro (student)
Occupational Injury Prevention, Occupational Health Psychology
The safety of U.S. construction workers is paramount, particularly given the prevalence of on-the-job fatalities and non-fatal injuries. However, there is currently no standard for safety meetings within the construction industry, and no evidence that construction companies apply meeting science to ensure the full functionality of safety meetings. This project aims to 1) identify the degree to which good meeting practices have been implemented in existing safety meetings, and 2) benchmark safety climate’s relationship to these practices. These efforts will provide initial recommendations for small construction companies, with a long-term goal of developing a standard for safety meetings for these companies. The research team will pursue federal funding for an intervention study to support the adoption of the standard and observe the changes in safety culture, injuries, and fatalities over time. A mixed-method study will be conducted of safety meetings consisting of observations and field notes, quantitative checklists, and interviews of safety meeting participants. Researchers will use a checklist of science-based meeting practices to identify current procedures, practices, processes, and behaviors known to enhance or detract from effective meetings. Another component of the research will include assessing the safety climate of construction crews and test the correlated relationship to both the prevalence of safety meetings and self-reported injuries.
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