Behavioral Safety Research in Manufacturing Settings: A Review of the Literature

Occupational safety continues to have large humanitarian and economic repercussions. This is particularly true in the manufacturing industry which has had the highest injury and illness rates for the past three years. Historically, attention was focused on determining the factors that correlated with safety. However, such approaches have fallen out of favor and the focus has shifted to manipulating the environment-engineering and behavioral safety. This manuscript reviews 18 behavioral safety programs implemented in manufacturing settings according to (a) settings, (b) subjects, (c) experimental design, (d) dependent variables, (e) intervention effectiveness, (f) miscellaneous effects, (g) maintenance, (h) integrity and reliability, and (i) social validity. Suggestions for future researchers are discussed.