The Distracted Worker: Effect on Hazard Recognition and Safety Performance

Hazard recognition is an essential element for successful accident and injury prevention. However, studies have revealed that construction workers fail to identify a large proportion of hazards in their workplaces. Therefore, understanding factors that adversely affect hazard recognition performance is a fundamental step towards improving safety performance. Given the unique, complex, and dynamic nature of construction operations, past research has provided anecdotal evidence suggesting that distraction may be correlated to undesirable safety outcomes such as injuries. For example, Hinze’s distraction theory suggests that workers are more likely to be involved in an accident while they are distracted. However, these theoretical propositions have not been empirically tested. To address this knowledge gap, the objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that distracted workers will identify fewer hazards than undistracted workers. To test the hypothesis, an experiment was conducted with 70 construction workers where the participants were randomly assigned to a distracted or an undistracted group. Sixteen pre-selected case images, representing real construction operations, were used to evaluate the hazard recognition performance of the workers. For the distracted group, distraction was induced using visual stimuli presented as unrelated video clips during the hazard recognition activity. The data analysis results showed that the distracted workers recognized a smaller proportion of hazards than the undistracted workers (p-value = 0.003). The research findings indicate that reducing workplace distractions can be a useful intervention to improve the safety performance of construction workers such as hazard recognition levels.