The surface-mining worker fatalities are unacceptably high as compared to other private industries in United States such as construction, manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. Although many studies about generating a safe work environment and developing safety training through intervention modules have tried to reduce the number of worker fatalities by utilizing an administrative approach to the development of safety controls, a rigorous study about understanding craftworkers' perceptions of a safe work environment is lacking. This study particularly investigated quarry workers' safety behaviors regarding work hazards by adapting findings from construction safety research because construction and mining industries have similarities in work hazards and environment. Despite their similarities, the work fatality rate in the mining industry is greater than in the construction industry (BLS, 2018). To gain a greater understanding of how quarry workers identify and interpret work hazards and employ strategies to prevent accidents, this study explored quarry workers' perceptions of work hazards (i.e., hazard identification, severity interpretation) and their preventive strategies to develop a safer working environment at the workplace. To accomplish this, a single descriptive case study was conducted with multiple sources of data such as interviews with photo elicitation, field notes, site photographs, and precursory meeting with safety managers. These sources of data were used to investigate quarry workers' identification and interpretation skills and utilization of preventive strategies. This study will contribute to improve safety of workers by incorporating workers' perceptions of work hazards and by exploring their experience to the development of safety training. / Master of Science / The surface-mining industry is one of the private industries with a high fatality rate in the United States. To reduce the number of accidents and help workers to perform safely in the workplace, previous studies have investigated different strategies to promote workers’ safety performance. These strategies include safety interventions such as safety training and safety inspections. However, a lack of study exists to understand workers’ behaviors and perceptions regarding safety and work hazards. To better explore workers’ behaviors and perceptions, this study adapted findings from construction safety research. Because the number of surface-mining safety research is relatively small and the work environment and types of work hazards in both the surface-mining and construction industries share similarities, the findings in construction safety research can be used to promote a safer workplace for surface-mine workers. By adapting findings in construction safety research, this study further investigated workers’ perceptions of work hazards, which is operationalized in two approaches: hazard identification and severity interpretation. This study also examines workers’ execution of strategies to prevent accidents. These observations were gathered through the utilization of a case study of quarry, which gave a guideline to the researcher to collect data from multiple sources (e.g., precursory meeting with safety managers, field notes, photographs, interviews) and analyze the findings by primarily using participants’ responses in the interviews with photo elicitation. This study will contribute to improve a safer workplace in the surface mining industry by incorporating workers’ perceptions and experience and by emphasizing workers’ involvement in tandem with company commitment to develop safety training.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/93314 |
| Date | 29 August 2019 |
| Creators | Bae, Hwangbo |
| Contributors | Civil and Environmental Engineering, Simmons, Denise Rutledge, Paige, Frederick, Kleiner, Brian M., Groen, Cassandra J. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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