A CASE-CONTROL STUDY OF POSSIBLE RISK-FACTORS IN THE CAUSATION OF OCCUPATIONAL INJURY

Under the occupational health and safety legislation current in most A ustralian States, legal responsibility is placed on management to iden tify and control hazards at their own worksites, and accordingly the s uccess of the strategy must depend on effective management practice. T o evaluate the role of management practices and other factors, an inve stigation was made of 98 worksites where severe or moderately severe i njuries had recently been reported, and, where possible, of matching w orksites where a similar accident had not occurred, at least for a per iod of 2 years. Matching worksites were identified for 78 of the accid ent sites. Using a case-control design, estimates were made of a numbe r of factors, including the association of certain management practice s, deemed a priori to be desirable in the interests of safety, with th e risk of injury. Associations between the ''desirable'' management pr actices, safety training of management and operator training, and redu ced risk of injury were weak and inconsistent. The risk of injury was unrelated to age of operator or experience of operator. Safety bonuses were associated with increased risk of injury, and production bonuses and written Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) with decreased risk of injury, but the associations were not statistically significant. Th e finding that the implementation of ''desirable'' management practice s has, at best, a weak association with reducing the risk of injury pu ts into question the untested assumption of the Robens Committee of th e need for ''personal responsiblity and voluntary, self-generating eff ort'', and that campaigns to increase the uptake of such measures as s afety in management, training of managers and job training of operator s are likely to be of great benefit. Management has largely made a com mitment to safety already, but this is insufficient unless it is accom panied by valid and specific information on safety technology. It is s uggested there is still an important role for prescriptive regulations aimed at specific hazards, notwithstanding the Robens view that there should not be ''too much reliance on state regulation''.