Elsevier

Safety Science

Volume 44, Issue 10, December 2006, Pages 851-874
Safety Science

The contribution of qualitative analyses of occupational health and safety interventions: An example through a study of external advisory interventions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2006.05.003Get rights and content

Abstract

With this study, we endeavoured to develop a model to explain both the processes leading to preventive-based changes during occupational health and safety interventions performed by external advisors, and the effect of the workplace context on these interventions and on the implementation of change proposals. The study concerns seven interventions carried out by advisors from four joint occupational health and safety sector-based associations. This longitudinal study entailed observing external advisor/workplace actors interactions and various interviews with the advisor and workplace actors. Each proposal for change was followed to see if it would be accepted, modified, and implemented or not. The research strategy and results presented herein illustrate the potential explanatory value of a qualitative, longitudinal study. For this purpose, we extracted six methodological principles from the eight criteria (further broken down into 17 questions) set forth in an article by Shannon et al. [Shannon, H.S., Robson, L.S., Guastello, S.J., 1999. Methodological criteria for evaluating safety intervention research. Safety Science 31, 161–179]. This article was chosen for its explicit, succinct presentation of a series of methodological criteria, some of which have been cited by other authors. The principles we selected are those that qualitative research could particularly be useful in attaining, among all the criteria defined by Shannon et al. (1999). The study results illustrate how a qualitative intra- and inter-case study could contribute to fulfillment of each selected principle, and towards a better understanding of the conditions for preventive intervention effectiveness.

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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