Validation of the Safety Behaviour Test (SBT): using an interactive tutorial to remove adverse impact

Type of content
Theses / Dissertations
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Psychology
Degree name
Master of Science
Publisher
University of Canterbury
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
English
Date
2019
Authors
Watson, Christopher
Abstract

Workplace accidents occur at an alarmingly high rate in New Zealand. Workplace safety literature suggests that 90% of these accidents involve new employees (Burt, 2015). Currently existing safety behaviour assessments are prone to bias, and it is difficult to select safe employees during a job application process. Gamification of assessments appears promising as a solution to these biases. The Safety Behaviour Test (SBT) is an assessment developed for selection to take advantage of the benefits of gamification. The test places individuals in a virtual environment and measures their safety behaviour. Previous work validating the SBT (Burt, Crowe, & Thomas, 2018) found that video game experience had an adverse impact on the assessment. The SBT was only able to measure authentic safety behavior from individuals with computer game experience. Individuals with computer game experience also scored higher on the SBT than others. In order to remove the adverse impact, an interactive pre-assessment tutorial was created. A study of 60 individuals found that the new tutorial removed the difference in SBT score between those with computer game experience, and those without. A second validation study compared SBT score against acquaintance ratings of safety behavior. It is unclear whether a lack of computer game experience still has an adverse impact on SBT score, as no significant correlations between criterion variables and SBT scores were found. The need for measures of safety behavior and their practical use is discussed.

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Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
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All Rights Reserved