The contribution of qualitative analyses of occupational health and safety interventions: An example through a study of external advisory interventions
Section snippets
Problem
In recent years, evaluating the effects of occupational health and safety intervention has become a growing concern in both the scientific and public policy arenas (Zwerling et al., 1997, Goldenhar and Schulte, 1994, Volinn, 1999). This gave rise to some literature reviews (e.g. Goldenhar and Schulte, 1994, Guastello, 1993, Zwerling et al., 1997, Cohen and Colligan, 1998, Karsh et al., 2001, Denis et al., 2005, Cole et al., 2005) and to the formulation of methodological proposals (Heacock et
Theoretical framework and longitudinal qualitative analysis method
Our research question was the following: By which processes and under what conditions (context) do external occupational health and safety interventions contribute to prevention-oriented changes? Thus, the study was an attempt to open the “black box” of intervention (Bellemare, 1998) in order to highlight the processes (how) and conditions (where, with whom, etc.) that produce prevention-favourable changes. Yin (1994) recommended using the case study method when attempting to understand “how”
Sample results obtained by qualitative longitudinal analysis
The results presented here do not take into account all proposals issued from the material analysed, on the basis of the model developed (see Baril-Gingras, 2003, Baril-Gingras et al., 2004), but simply illustrate what a longitudinal qualitative analysis can generate, both in terms of contribution and limitations.
Study limits
One of the primary limits of a study such as ours, is external validity: number of cases and representativeness were sacrificed in favour of analyses depth. Moreover, the choice of intermediate outcome indicators would not allow to verify the validity of new types of preventive measures (see Shannon et al., 1999, Zwerling et al., 1997), i.e. their capacity to generate expected outcomes related to reducing injury. Various studies already established the effectiveness of various types of measures
Acknowledgements
This research was carried out within the framework a Ph.D. thesis in the Faculté des sciences de l’administration, Laval University, under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Brun. It was made possible by a research grant from the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (co-directed by Jean-Pierre Brun and Marie Bellemare), a Doctoral Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a scholarship from the Fonds pour la formation de
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