Original Article

The Relationship Between Safety Locus of Control and Occupational Trauma: a Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Opinions about the occupational trauma causes are significantly different, which have a great impact on the nature of interventions and may improve health and safety (H&S) performance. Locus of control can be one of the most important determinants of the H&S performance. Because of the importance of this variable in relation to the prevention of occupational trauma in work environments, this study was aimed to investigate the relationship between safety locus of control and occupational trauma. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 346 employees of a cosmetic industry. The instruments included a demographic questionnaire, safety locus of control questionnaire, and self-reported occupational trauma questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistical tests in IBM SPSS software version 22.0. Of the total number of participants in the study, 22.5% (76 people) were reported that they had experienced an occupational trauma in the last year and 77.5% (262) did not have occupational trauma. Four subjects did not respond to the occupational trauma-related questions. The mean score of safety locus of control in the study group was 38.87±5.8 and was higher than the mean value of the questionnaire (36.0). The results showed that the safety locus of control had a significant relationship with occupational trauma (p<0.01). These findings confirmed the results of previous studies, which had been carried out mostly in non-industrial areas. The results have indicated that the place of safety locus of control had a significant effect on occupational trauma in industrial areas, so it can be considered as a predictor of occupational trauma occurrence.

1. Fazel, M.R., et al., Demographic profiles of adult trauma during a 5 year period (2007-2011) in Kashan, IR Iran. Archives of trauma research, 2012. 1(2): p. 63.
2. AmidiMazaheri, M., A. Hidarnia, and F. Ghofranipour, safety locus of control Survay in Isfahan Steel Company workers, in 2 th Tehran Safe Community Conference. 2009: Tehran.
3. Kiani, F. and M.R. Khodabakhsh, Promoting Individual Learning for Trainees with Perceived High Helplessness: Experiences of a Safety Training Program. Iranian journal of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, 2014. 8(4): p. 19.
4. Geller, E.S. and S.W. Clarke, Safety self-management: A key behavior-based process for injury prevention. Professional Safety, 1999. 44(7): p. 29-33.
5. Joseph, C. and A. Ganesh, Aviation safety locus of control in Indian aviators. Indian Journal of Aerospace Medicine, 2006. 50(1): p. 14-21.
6. Amidi Mazaher, M., A. Hidarnia, and F. Ghofranipour, Design and determine validity and reliability of safety locus of control scale in Isfahan Steel Company workers. Iran Occupational Health Journal, 2010. 7(3): p. 17-23.
7. Hunter, D.R. and J.E. Stewart, Safety locus of control and accident involvement among army aviators. The International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 2012. 22(2): p. 144-163.
8. Joseph, C., S. Reddy, and K. Kashore Sharma, Locus of Control, Safety Attitudes and Involvement in Hazardous Events in Indian Army Aviators. Aviation Psychology and Applied Human Factors, 2013. 3(1): p. 9-18.
9. You, X., M. Ji, and H. Han, The effects of risk perception and flight experience on airline pilots’ locus of control with regard to safety operation behaviors. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2013. 57: p. 131-139.
10. Jones, J.W. and L.J. Wuebker, Safety locus of control and employees' accidents. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1993. 7(4): p. 449-457.
11. Moayed, M.S., et al., Stress and fear of exposure to sharps in nurses. Iranian journal of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, 2016. 10(3).
12. Hosseini, Z., T. Aghamolaei, and A. Ghanbarnejad, Prediction of health promoting behaviors through the health locus of control in a sample of adolescents in Iran. Health Scope, 2017. 6(2).
13. Chittaro, L. Changing User’s Safety Locus of Control through Persuasive Play: An Application to Aviation Safety. in International Conference on Persuasive Technology. 2014. Springer.
14. Young, S., I. Donald, and J. Chalk, Safety teams: using team work to improve organizational performance. Occupational Psychologist, 1997. 31: p. 5-10.
15. Mearns, K., S.M. Whitaker, and R. Flin, Safety climate, safety management practice and safety performance in offshore environments. Safety science, 2003. 41(8): p. 641-680.
16. Vinodkumar, M. and M. Bhasi, A study on the impact of management system certification on safety management. Safety Science, 2011. 49(3): p. 498-507.
17. Mohammadfam, I., et al., Confirmatory factor analysis of occupational injuries: presenting an analytical tool. Trauma monthly, 2017. 22(2).
18. Abedini, R., et al., Health consequences of shift-work: The case of Iranian Hospital Security Personnel. Work, 2015. 50(2): p. 305-311.
19. Hunter, D., Development of an aviation safety locus of control scale. Aviation, space, and environmental medicine., 2002. 73(12): p. 1184-1188.
20. Wuebker, L.J., Safety locus of control as a predictor of industrial accidents and injuries. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1986. 1(1): p. 19-30.
Files
IssueVol 11 No 2 (2019) QRcode
SectionOriginal Article(s)
Published2019-08-11
Keywords
Locus of control Occupational trauma Error Safety performance
Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Soltanzadeh A, Mahdinia M, Mirzaei Aliabadi M, Mohammadbeigi A. The Relationship Between Safety Locus of Control and Occupational Trauma: a Cross-Sectional Study. Int J Occup Hyg. 2019;11(2):85-90.