Understanding industrial safety signs: implications for occupational safety management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the understanding of industrial safety signs and messages by registered and non‐registered safety officers in Hong Kong with ten different user factors, and examine the relationship between cognitive sign features and sign comprehensibility.Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology includes the survey development and appropriate statistical analyses. In total, 92 Hong Kong Chinese participated voluntarily in the study. A questionnaire survey was used to collect information about demographics, personal experience on safety and health issues, experience of reviewing safety sign information, comprehension scores, and the ratings of sign features for 30 industrial safety signs used in Hong Kong. The effect of ten user factors on sign understanding for the design of highly usable safety signs was examined.Findings – Of the ten factors tested, only the factor of possession of registered safety officer (RSO) status was a significant predictor of ...

[1]  Jennie D. Bowen,et al.  Employer integration of health promotion and health protection programs , 2008 .

[2]  Hossam A. Gabbar,et al.  Intelligent Topology Analyzer for Improved Plant Operation , 2006, 2006 SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference.

[3]  Małgorzata Milczarek,et al.  The Relationship Between Workers’ Safety Culture and Accidents, Near Accidents and Health Problems , 2004, International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics : JOSE.

[4]  Helen Lingard,et al.  Coworkers' response to occupational health and safety: An overlooked dimension of group‐level safety climate in the construction industry? , 2011 .

[5]  John Abeysekera,et al.  Understanding small graphical symbols: a cross-cultural study , 2001 .

[6]  Mary F Lesch,et al.  Comprehension and memory for warning symbols: age-related differences and impact of training. , 2003, Journal of safety research.

[7]  Aaron J. Marcus,et al.  Icon and symbol design issues for graphical user interfaces , 1996 .

[8]  Jef Raskin,et al.  The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems , 2000 .

[9]  Patrick W. Jordan,et al.  An Introduction to Usability , 1998 .

[10]  Marisa Salanova,et al.  Safety Attitudes and Their Relationship to Safety Training and Generalised Self-Efficacy , 2002, International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics : JOSE.

[11]  Vincent G. Duffy,et al.  Using AHP for determining priority in a safety management system , 2004, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[12]  Alan H S Chan,et al.  Effects of sign characteristics and training methods on safety sign training effectiveness , 2010, Ergonomics.

[13]  Marie-Pierre Bruyas,et al.  Ergonomic guidelines for the design of pictorial information , 1998 .

[14]  David Golding,et al.  Managing the Environment , 1987 .

[15]  Imanol Núñez,et al.  Safety capital: the management of organizational knowledge on occupational health and safety , 2011 .

[16]  C. Subramaniam,et al.  Management practice in safety culture and its influence on workplace injury: an industrial study in Malaysia. , 2009 .

[17]  Wendy A. Rogers,et al.  Designing warnings to compensate for age-related changes in perceptual and cognitive abilities , 1998 .

[18]  Chi Ming Tam,et al.  Relationship between construction safety signs and symbols recognition and characteristics of construction personnel , 2003 .

[19]  Gerard I.J.M. Zwetsloot,et al.  The organizational benefits of investing in workplace health , 2010 .

[20]  Alan H S Chan,et al.  The guessability of traffic signs: effects of prospective-user factors and sign design features. , 2007, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[21]  Martin B. Curry,et al.  Measuring symbol and icon characteristics: Norms for concreteness, complexity, meaningfulness, familiarity, and semantic distance for 239 symbols , 1999, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[22]  Alan H. S. Chan,et al.  Cognitive Design Features on Traffic Signs , 2007, Eng. Lett..

[23]  Udo Arend,et al.  Evidence for global feature superiority in menu selection by icons , 1987 .

[24]  David Laurence,et al.  Safety rules and regulations on mine sites - the problem and a solution. , 2005, Journal of safety research.

[25]  Ros Dowse,et al.  The influence of education on the interpretation of pharmaceutical pictograms for communicating medicine instructions , 2003 .

[26]  Binshan Lin,et al.  Key issues and challenges of risk management and insurance in China's construction industry: An empirical study , 2007, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[27]  Annie W. Y. Ng,et al.  Hong Kong Chinese and Korean comprehension of American security safety symbols , 2009 .

[28]  Holly E. Hancock,et al.  Safety Symbol Comprehension: Effects of Symbol Type, Familiarity, and Age , 2004, Hum. Factors.

[29]  Long Liu,et al.  Symbol Comprehension in Different Countries: Experience Gained from Medical Device Area , 2005, Mensch & Computer Workshopband.

[30]  Seth Ayim Gyekye,et al.  Workers’ Perceptions of Workplace Safety: An African Perspective , 2006, International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics : JOSE.

[31]  Alan H. S. Chan,et al.  The effects of driver factors and sign design features on the comprehensibility of traffic signs. , 2008, Journal of safety research.

[32]  John Henderson.  Memory and Forgetting , 1999 .

[33]  René Torenvlied,et al.  Managing The Environment , 2011 .

[34]  Bruce Hebblewhite,et al.  Mine safety─through appropriate combination of technology and management practice , 2009 .

[35]  Annie W. Y. Ng,et al.  Investigation of guessability of industrial safety signs: Effects of prospective-user factors and cognitive sign features , 2010 .

[36]  Albert P.C. Chan,et al.  Findings from a research study of construction safety in Hong Kong : accidents related to fall of person from height , 2009 .

[37]  Henning Madsen,et al.  Greening of human resources: environmental awareness and training interests within the workforce , 2001, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[38]  Ros Dowse,et al.  Pictograms for conveying medicine instructions: comprehension in various South African language groups , 2004 .

[39]  Tonya L Smith-Jackson,et al.  Cultural Ergonomics in Ghana, West Africa: A Descriptive Survey of Industry and Trade Workers’ Interpretations of Safety Symbols , 2002, International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics : JOSE.

[40]  D. Edington,et al.  The total value of health: a review of literature , 2008 .

[41]  Michael S. Wogalter,et al.  Comprehension of Pictorial Symbols: Effects of Context and Test Method , 1998, Hum. Factors.

[42]  Robert B. Whittingham,et al.  The Blame Machine: Why Human Error Causes Accidents , 2004 .

[43]  Mary Beth Rosson,et al.  Usability Engineering: Scenario-based Development of Human-Computer Interaction , 2001 .

[44]  Kathryn Mearns,et al.  Safety and Situation Awareness in Offshore Crews , 2004 .

[45]  W. K. Law,et al.  Prioritising the safety management elements: A hierarchical analysis for manufacturing enterprises , 2006, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[46]  Om Prakash Kharbanda,et al.  Company Culture – Its Role in an Industrial Society , 1991 .