Modifying Behavior to Improve Miners’ Hazard Recognition Skills Through Training

Details

• Personal Author:
  Barrett, Edward A. ; Fotta B ; Kowalski, Kathleen M.
• Description:
  This paper discusses the application of psychological principles to the critical problem of hazard recognition by miners. The U.S. Bureau of Mines identified fundamental psychological principles that could be employed to enhance the ability of miners to recognize and respond to threats in their dangerous work environment. The goal of this work was to identify concepts that could potentially lead to interventions to improve miners hazard recognition abilities and to modify their behaviors. An innovative training program, adapted from techniques used to train military observers in the identification of camouflaged targets, was developed by Bureau researchers and used in a hazard recognition study. This study, of the effectiveness of such an intervention, is presented to illustrate the feasibility of applying psychological principles to the task of hazard recognition. As researchers hypothesized, underground miners trained using visually degraded (realistically camouflaged representations of mine hazards) instructional materials, performed better on a follow-up hazard recognition performance measure than did miners trained using traditional materials in which hazards are made visually conspicuous for easy recognition. The authors suggest that this type of instructional material and this method of instruction are generally applicable for hazard recognition training in a variety of work environments. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Accident Prevention Accidents Behavior Mining Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Accident-prevention Behavior-patterns Injury-prevention Mine-workers Miners Mining-industry Occupational-hazards Occupational-health Occupational-safety-programs Safety-equipment Safety-measures Safety-monitoring Safety-practices Safety-programs Training

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• Series:
  Mining Publications
• Publisher:
  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; Pennsylvania ; Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRC - Pittsburgh Research Center
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  95-104
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20030397
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the 26th Annual Institute on Mining Health, Safety and Research, August 28-30, 1995, Blacksburg, Virginia. Tinney G, Bacho A, Karmis M, eds., Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1995 Aug; :95-104
• Editor(s):
  Tinney G; Bacho A; Karmis M
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1995
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Proceedings of the 26th Annual Institute on Mining Health, Safety and Research, August 28-30, 1995, Blacksburg, Virginia
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:6639c8dcdc312991882e423d2056c47c335d5a9f7d7a81f510f0801584feb5c4d9f695dfad78f093ec8609c7fae8d909abd3947375b5c5a2ebf4f28c67693254
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/226549/cdc_226549_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.19 MB ]