Who do you ask? Predicting injury rates from survey responses.
Leslie I Boden, Yixin Pan, Matt Gregas and 5 others
PMID 38995756WHAT IT FOUND
Workers’ survey responses about safety practices predicted future injuries, but managers’ responses did not.
Adding manager data to worker data improved prediction no further. When surveying only one group to identify safety risks, choose workers.
Key findings
01Higher worker scores on ergonomics and general safety scales were significantly associated with lower injury rates.
02None of the manager-reported odds ratios for injury significantly differed from 1.0, indicating no predictive value from manager surveys alone.
03Statistical models preferred worker-only data; adding manager scores did not appreciably improve predictions compared to the worker-only model.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Injury data was based on employer-collected OSHA records, which are known to be substantially underreported. The study focused on specific safety scales in hospital patient care workers; results may not generalize to other industries or survey instruments. The number of managers surveyed (72) was much smaller than the number of workers (1492), which increased the precision of worker estimates compared to manager estimates.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume this proves managers are unaware of safety issues or that their perceptions are useless for all purposes. The study specifically shows that for predicting recorded injury rates in this hospital setting, worker surveys were superior, and combining them with manager surveys added no further predictive power.