Impact of a worker notification program: Assessment of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes

✍ Scribed by Dorothy Tan-Wilhelm; Kim Witte; Wen-Ying Liu; Lee S. Newman; Alan Janssen; Chris Ellison; Anthony Yancey; Wayne Sanderson; Paul K. Henneberger

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 171 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0271-3586
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0274(200002)37:2<205::aid-ajim6>3.0.co;2-3

✦ Synopsis

Background Hundreds of worker noti®cation programs are conducted each year to communicate occupational risks to workers. However, few attempts have been made to evaluate their effectiveness and few have described how communication theories are applied in developing noti®cation messages. We developed and assessed the effectiveness of a worker noti®cation program at a beryllium machining plant. Methods We compared self-protective attitudinal and behavioral responses among workers in two plants: (1) an intervention plant that received beryllium risk noti®cation and (2) a matched control plant that did not receive noti®cation. Results Workers receiving noti®cation reported signi®cantly stronger perceptions of threat and ef®cacy, more positive attitudes toward safety practices, and engaged in more protective behaviors than the workers at the control plant. Conclusions This study demonstrates the utility of applying communication theories in the development of noti®cation messages and the results suggest that mass presentations may be just as effective, if not more so, than one-on-one noti®cations. Am.