Open Cut » Health and Safety
This project undertook an exploratory investigation of the causes of risk taking among Australian coal miners. Risk taking has long been identified in the literature as a contributory factor in accidents, injuries, and fatalities within the coal mining industry. Past research has primarily focused on the identification of risk taking as a significant factor in poor safety outcomes rather than investigating the psychological causes of risk taking behaviour among miners. A lack of understanding of the psychology underpinning human safety behaviour ultimately limits the effectiveness of risk management. As such the focus of this project was to gain further insight into the psychological causes of risk taking behaviour among Australian coal miners.
The research involved both open cut and underground coal mines and was conducted across two phases.
Phase 1 involved a longitudinal research survey of 2,410 coal miners from New South Wales and Queensland. The aim was to identify the psychological causes of dangerous risk taking behaviour among coal miners. A range of safety culture and climate variables was measured across two surveys administered on average 10 months apart. Survey results revealed participants' age and perceived poor safety norms at their mine site were significant longitudinal predictors of reported risk taking. These findings suggest that young miners and miners who perceive it to be normal for miners at their mine site to ignore safety procedures are more likely to report taking safety risks in the future.
Phase 2 developed and tested an intervention in response to the results from Phase 1. The intervention trialled an interactive group discussion of a series of site related safety scenarios and included two surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in relation to perceived site safety norms and self reported risk taking. The study involved 1,228 participants from coal mines in New South Wales. Results revealed that participants reported an appreciation of the intervention, and that participation increased the level of safety discussion among coal miners. Importantly, the more participants valued the task, the less frequently they reported taking risks, providing support for the value of the intervention. However, the effect of the intervention on self report risk taking was nonsignificant.
This research provides increased knowledge of the psychological causes underpinning risk taking behaviour and identifies site safety norms as an influential factor over individual safety attitudes and behaviour and a basis for targeted intervention to reduce risk taking and improve safety outcomes across the industry. The research has also identified and tested a group discussion methodology that, with some modifications, may be capable of reducing risk taking among miners.