The Relationship between Workers' Safety Attitudes and Their Beliefs in Destiny, Chance and the Rule of Control Measures in Prevention of Tunneling Accidents

Background : The implementation of HSE programs is so complicated in tunneling industry which is considered as one of the risky industries. This study aims at investigating the relationship between employees' safety attitudes and status of their belief in destiny, chance and perceived importance of HSE programs in occurrence of occupational accidents. Methods : This research is a cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical study on a contracting company specialized in tunneling, and investigates a total of 689 subjects. A standard 25-item questionnaire is used to assess safety attitude; and three researcher-made questions are utilized to evaluate the subjects' belief in destiny, chance and perceived importance of HSE programs in occurrence of occupational accidents. The reliability and validity of these questions are obtained by Cronbach's alpha test (α=0.76). All analyses are done at the significance level of 0.05 by the help of SPSS 16 software. Results : There is a significant direct relationship between belief in chance in occurrence of occupational accidents with subjects' safety attitudes (P-value<0.05 and r=0.76), and also between belief in absolute destiny in occurrence of occupational accidents (P-value<0.05 and r=0.59). Furthermore, there is a significant direct relationship between status of acceptance and perceived importance of HSE unit programs in reducing the occupational accidents with subjects' safety attitudes (P-value<0.01 and r=0.51), and also between belief in chance in occurrence of occupational accidents (P-value<0.05 and r=0.68). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the employees, who consider external factors such as chance and destiny as the main and absolute reasons for occurrence of occupational accidents, believe less in controlling accidents by looking for solution and scientific and educational methods such as prevention programs of HSE to cope with event.

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