An investigation of attitudes towards safety in the Ontario construction industry

Safety climate research is a fundamental organizational approach to safety that entails identifying attitudes and perceptions that may be root causes of workplace incidents and injuries. This study provides a construction industry specific questionnaire that documents worker attitudes and perceptions towards a variety of organizational and physical site factors that affect safety on construction sites. A total of 275 construction workers completed the survey. Thirteen safety attitude factors were found to be consistent over the entire sample of participants. A variety of statistical methods identified numerous relationships between the factors and demographic characteristics of the participants. Most important of those were the four factors found to be statistically significant with safety performance (measured from self reported incident data). In addition to the safety climate research, attitudes towards the main causes of injuries and site safety inspections were documented. Recommendations for future construction safety climate were given.