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The Impact of Hazard Statement Design Characteristics in Procedures on Compliance

Research conducted on procedures suggests that correct procedure use is associated with safe and effective work operations (Jamieson & Miller, 2000). However, procedure (mis) use is often the root cause of accidents in industrial settings (Bullemer, & Laberge, 2010). One potential reason for these missteps is that there is not enough adequate research on how the information in procedures should be presented or designed. Indeed, design may lead to confusion and could lead to workers not finding them useful simply because it is difficult to follow (Embrey, 1999). The clarity of elements presented in procedures is not a content issue, but a design problem. In these high-risk environments, procedure writers often use best practices that where they presume how these HS should be written. In theory, the goal is to differentiate hazard information in general, but more specifically, have disparate statements that (presumably) cause hazard information (e.g., how to avoid the hazard) to stand out from the other procedure steps. Little research has been conducted on which statement design characteristics lead to or are associated with higher levels of compliance, specifically for procedures. Furthermore, there is little research where these types of design characteristics have been manipulated in any study environment (lab/field) with the purpose of determining which features have positive, negative, or no effect. We think that it is just as useful to identify redundant or “no effect” characteristics for procedure writers so they may focus more on important characteristics. One exception is a study conducted by Tharpe, Peres, and Thomas (2017) where in a lab study using a virtual environment, the information “type” included in the hazard symbol or icon was manipulated. This included either a) hazard only, b) hazard and consequence, or c) hazard, consequence, and mitigation. They found no compliance differences based on the content included in the hazard icon itself. Accordingly, we sought to examine some design characteristics of HSs where content was not manipulated. More specifically, we wanted to examine whether the presence or absence of four commonly used HS design characteristics an icon/symbol, numbering the HS, filling (or highlighting) the HS, and whether outlining/boxing the HS – leads to different HS compliance rates.