Characterizing Occupational Risk Perception: the Case of Biological, Ergonomic and Organizational Hazards in Spanish Healthcare Workers

Abstract

Understanding how risk is perceived by workers is necessary for effective risk communication and risk management. This study adapts key elements of the psychometric perspective to characterize occupational risk perception at a worker level. A total of 313 Spanish healthcare workers evaluated relevant hazards in their workplaces related to biological, ergonomic and organizational factors. A questionnaire elicited workers' ratings of 3 occupational hazards on 9 risk attributes along with perceived risk. Factor and regression analyses reveal regularities in how different risks are perceived, while, at the same time, the procedure helps to summarize specificities in the perception of each hazard. The main regularity is the weight of feeling of dread/severity in order to characterize the risk perceived (β ranges from .22 to .41; p < .001). Data also suggest an underestimation of expert knowledge in relation to the personal knowledge of risk. Thus, participants consider their knowledge of the risk related to biological, ergonomic, and organizational hazards to be higher than the knowledge attributed to the occupational experts (mean differences 95% CIs [.10, .30], [.54, .94], and [0.52, 1.05]). We demonstrate the application of a feasible and systematic procedure to capture how workers perceive hazards in their immediate work environment.

Safety disconnect: Analysis of the role of labor experience and safety training on work safety perceptions

“…Despite the rigorous efforts, these studies do not identify the source of the differences in work safety perceptions (Portell et al, 2014). In this study, we propose that the safety disconnect between workers and experts, in terms of perceived work safety, can be explained by the differentiating effect of labor experience and formal training over safety perceptions.…”

“…Two groups of factors characterize risk: 1) dread, as the extent to which a hazard causes feelings of fear (related to lack of control, dreaded consequences, catastrophic potential and fatal consequences), and 2) obscurity, as a level of risk understanding (related to knowledge, immediacy of consequences, newness and observability) (Portell, Gil, Losilla & Vives, 2014). Therefore, work risk assessments include hazard identification, risk characterization, risk level assessment, evaluation of the probability of occurrence and expectations about severity of accidents (Porru et al, 2006).…”

“…The dominant approach in this field is the psychometric paradigm which assumes risk as subjectively defined by individuals who can be influenced by a wide array of psychological, social, institutional and cultural factors (Portell et al, 2014). Hallowell (2010) defines risk perception as an individual's subjective judgment of the frequency and severity of a particular danger.…”

“…Furthermore, perceived work safety is also heterogeneous across the different types of employees working for the organization (Fischhoff et al, 1978;Portell et al, 2014). While employees are more familiar with the different work risks and have experienced (or witnessed) work accidents, safety experts who design and implement safety measures may have a different mindset regarding safety at work (Perlman et al, 2014).…”

“…Fischhoff et al (1978) show that there are significant differences between non-experts' views on safety and experts' statements because, unlike experts, non-experts evaluate risks intuitively, informally and less precisely. In their analysis, Portell et al (2014) find that participants (employees) gave a greater valuation to their own safety knowledge relative to that of safety experts (the questions about the expert knowledge were characterized as the knowledge of health and safety by managers of the company). This is in line with our arguments that experts have superior safety-specific knowledge than workers.…”