Identifier

etd-07102008-154311

Degree

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering (MSIE)

Department

Construction Management

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

The construction industry has one of the highest incidents of fatal and non-fatal accidents/injuries every year. As a high risk industry, there is a need to investigate factors that affect the occurrence of these accidents to be able to protect workers. Traditional approaches to workers’ safety in the construction industry have focused on the physical and biomechanical aspects of work by improving tools, equipment and task completion methods. However, the impact of psychosocial factors, specifically stress as experienced by construction workers is an area of growing research. Research in the area of occupational stress in the Construction Industry is yielding results that suggest that overall work safety on the construction site, should take into account psychosocial aspects of work. Research is carried out to investigate the relationship existing among occupational stressors, psychological/physical symptoms and accident/injury and work days lost outcomes as experienced by industrial construction manual workers engaged in a range of construction occupations. Workers’ perceptions about stress levels on specific elements of work as well as responses about physical/psychosocial symptoms were obtained by administering a questionnaire adapted from previous research. Analysis of the data entailed investigation of relationships through correlation and regression analysis, existing between the levels job stressors as experienced by the workers and (a) Company Accident History (OSHA-300 form) reports (b) Employee self-reported injuries and (c) Lost work days in 12 months prior to the survey. Among the occupations surveyed, pipefitters were at the highest risk for getting injured and responded with the most negative levels of occupational stressors. Some of the occupational stressors significantly associated with self-reported and OSHA logged injuries were training, job certainty and safety climate of the company. The OSHA logged injuries were associated with the occurrence of headaches and feelings of tenseness on the job.

Date

2008

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Harvey, Craig

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.3062

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