PSYCHOSOCIAL RISKS AND WORK-RELATED ACCIDENTS: RESEARCH STUDIES AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

the National Institute of Safety and Health at Work (2011) indicates that 69% of respondents replied that their work presents some risk of accident and the number of accidents in the period between October 2009 and September 2010 was 560,105. Thus, accidents are the main health risk, especially in sectors such as construction and agriculture. Regarding the costs, official figures are hard to find, but if the direct costs are high, the indirect ones are even higher, in a ratio of 1:4 (for a review see Sun, Paez, Lee, Salem & Daraiseh, 2006). Also, at this moment, the economic crisis exacerbates this problem because it represents one more stressor with negative consequences on working conditions in general and on risk prevention in particular (Bettio, Corsi, Lyberaki, Samek & Verashchagina, 2013). These data justify the importance of studying the work-related accident rates, despite the complexity of the issue (the multiple variables involved, difficulty in accessing the samples and the data, experimental mortality, etc.) This article has two objectives. First, it aims to review the literature on this subject, and second it will present the main results of two research projects, from the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology at the UNED, on accidents in professional soldiers and in two particularly dangerous industries: construction and agriculture.