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Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice

The investigation of people raising or withholding safety concerns, termed safety voice, has relied on report-based methodologies, with few experiments. Generalisable findings have been limited because: the behavioural nature of safety voice is rarely operationalised; the reliance on memory and reca...

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Autores principales: Noort, Mark C., Reader, Tom W., Gillespie, Alex
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6454216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31001165
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00668
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author Noort, Mark C.
Reader, Tom W.
Gillespie, Alex
author_facet Noort, Mark C.
Reader, Tom W.
Gillespie, Alex
author_sort Noort, Mark C.
collection PubMed
description The investigation of people raising or withholding safety concerns, termed safety voice, has relied on report-based methodologies, with few experiments. Generalisable findings have been limited because: the behavioural nature of safety voice is rarely operationalised; the reliance on memory and recall has well-established biases; and determining causality requires experimentation. Across three studies, we introduce, evaluate and make available the first experimental paradigm for studying safety voice: the “Walking the plank” paradigm. This paradigm presents participants with an apparent hazard (walking across a weak wooden plank) to elicit safety voice behaviours, and it addresses the methodological shortfalls of report-based methodologies. Study 1 (n = 129) demonstrated that the paradigm can elicit observable safety voice behaviours in a safe, controlled and randomised laboratory environment. Study 2 (n = 69) indicated it is possible to elicit safety silence for a single hazard when safety concerns are assessed and alternative ways to address the hazard are absent. Study 3 (n = 75) revealed that manipulating risk perceptions results in changes to safety voice behaviours. We propose a distinction between two independent dimensions (concerned-unconcerned and voice-silence) which yields a 2 × 2 safety voice typology. Demonstrating the need for experimental investigations of safety voice, the results found a consistent mismatch between self-reported and observed safety voice. The discussion examines insights on conceptualising and operationalising safety voice behaviours in relationship to safety concerns, and suggests new areas for research: replicating empirical studies, understanding the behavioural nature of safety voice, clarifying the personal relevance of physical harm, and integrating safety voice with other harm-prevention behaviours. Our article adds to the conceptual strength of the safety voice literature and provides a methodology and typology for experimentally examining people raising safety concerns.
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spelling pubmed-64542162019-04-18 Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice Noort, Mark C. Reader, Tom W. Gillespie, Alex Front Psychol Psychology The investigation of people raising or withholding safety concerns, termed safety voice, has relied on report-based methodologies, with few experiments. Generalisable findings have been limited because: the behavioural nature of safety voice is rarely operationalised; the reliance on memory and recall has well-established biases; and determining causality requires experimentation. Across three studies, we introduce, evaluate and make available the first experimental paradigm for studying safety voice: the “Walking the plank” paradigm. This paradigm presents participants with an apparent hazard (walking across a weak wooden plank) to elicit safety voice behaviours, and it addresses the methodological shortfalls of report-based methodologies. Study 1 (n = 129) demonstrated that the paradigm can elicit observable safety voice behaviours in a safe, controlled and randomised laboratory environment. Study 2 (n = 69) indicated it is possible to elicit safety silence for a single hazard when safety concerns are assessed and alternative ways to address the hazard are absent. Study 3 (n = 75) revealed that manipulating risk perceptions results in changes to safety voice behaviours. We propose a distinction between two independent dimensions (concerned-unconcerned and voice-silence) which yields a 2 × 2 safety voice typology. Demonstrating the need for experimental investigations of safety voice, the results found a consistent mismatch between self-reported and observed safety voice. The discussion examines insights on conceptualising and operationalising safety voice behaviours in relationship to safety concerns, and suggests new areas for research: replicating empirical studies, understanding the behavioural nature of safety voice, clarifying the personal relevance of physical harm, and integrating safety voice with other harm-prevention behaviours. Our article adds to the conceptual strength of the safety voice literature and provides a methodology and typology for experimentally examining people raising safety concerns. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-04-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6454216/ /pubmed/31001165 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00668 Text en Copyright © 2019 Noort, Reader and Gillespie. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Noort, Mark C.
Reader, Tom W.
Gillespie, Alex
Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice
title Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice
title_full Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice
title_fullStr Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice
title_full_unstemmed Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice
title_short Walking the Plank: An Experimental Paradigm to Investigate Safety Voice
title_sort walking the plank: an experimental paradigm to investigate safety voice
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6454216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31001165
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00668
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