HOUSEKEEPING AND SAFETY - AN EPIDEMIOLOGIC REVIEW

In order to illustrate some basic principles of epidemiology and to su ggest how they can be applied to occupational safety studies, articles published between 1967 and 1997 concerned with the association of hou sekeeping and order to safety in the workplace were reviewed. Populati on studies were identified through electronic databases and manual sea rches. Five of the studies were descriptive or exploratory, and cited several factors, including housekeeping, associated with company safet y. Four studies were quasi-experimental and showed improvements in saf ety following changes in various behaviors and conditions, including h ousekeeping. Design weaknesses were found, significantly compromising the validity of these findings. These included the lack of external co mparisons, history and selection bias, and failure to control for conf ounding. Control for other variables was only done partially through t he design, and no attempt to use multivariate statistical models was m ade. The comments presented in this review should be seen as a base fo r guiding future studies in occupational safety. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sci ence Ltd. All rights reserved.