The association between safety climate and noncombat injury events among United States Air Force workers.

INTRODUCTION: Work-related injuries are a common lagging safety indicator whereas safety climate assessments can help identify constructs serving as leading indicators. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) partnered with the U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF) Safety Center to examine the association between perceptions of safety climate survey constructs and the number of injury events within the DAF workforce. METHODS: The DAF administers voluntary, anonymous, occupation-specific safety climate surveys to DAF workers using the internal Air Force Combined Mishap Reduction System (AFCMRS). Survey responses from 2014 to 2018 provided by DAF workers and injury events in maintenance, support, and operations occupations were shared with NIOSH. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed five constructs: Leadership and Communication; Organizational Safety Priority; Error Management; Resource Adequacy; and Deployment/Official Travel Impact. Squadron-level analysis included bivariate correlations and estimated Rate Ratios (RRs). RESULTS: 1,547 squadrons administered the survey, averaging 144 workers and 15.8 reportable injuries per squadron. Higher (more favorable) squadron-level construct scores were consistently correlated with fewer reported injuries (p < 0.001). Controlling for the number of workers, RRs revealed significant reductions in injury rates with each one-unit increase in responses: Leadership and Communication RR = 0.40 (95%CI: 0.32-0.48); Organizational Safety Priority RR = 0.50 (95%CI: 0.40-0.64); Error Management RR = 0.37 (95%CI: 0.30-0.47); Deployment/Official Travel Impact RR = 0.36 (95%CI: 0.29-0.45). Resource Adequacy revealed a non-significant lower injury rate RR = 0.87 (95%CI: 0.73-1.04). CONCLUSIONS: This unique study quantified safety climate and the association with injuries across a multi-year period. While safety climate measurements may be limited by frequent turnover and the self-reported, voluntary, anonymous nature of AFCMRS, the strength of this study is in the census of injuries. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Future research should include longitudinal analyses to examine the impact on injuries when squadron leaders are provided feedback on safety climate survey results.

The Development of Preschoolers' Living Kinds Concept: A Longitudinal Study.

Given limitations in the integrative scope of past research, basic questions about the organization and development of preschoolers' living kinds concept remain open to debate. This study was designed to address past limitations through use of a longitudinal design, extensive stimulus set, and alternate indices of understanding. Thirty-five English-speaking 3-year-olds from middle-class families in Albuquerque, NM participated in four testing sessions over 1 year. Indices of understanding included statements that preschoolers generated about various living and nonliving objects, biological properties they attributed to the objects, and their characterization of objects as "alive" or not. Results reveal a multifaceted picture of developmental change in preschoolers' living kinds concept involving both the construction and elaboration of a core biological understanding.

Is envy categorical or dimensional? An empirical investigation using taxometric analysis.

Researchers frequently disagree about the latent structure of emotions. Taxometric analysis--a method for determining whether the latent structure of a construct is best defined as categorical or purely dimensional--can be a useful tool for resolving these debates. The present study used taxometric analysis to investigate the latent structure of envy. Scholars disagree about whether envy is necessarily malicious or whether it can also be benign. Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters (2009) claim that benign envy exists, and that it is distinct from malicious envy. Much of their evidence for this claim relies on latent class analysis, which can be biased toward creating categories with data that actually vary dimensionally (Cleland, Rothschild, & Haslam, 2000; Uebersax, 1999). Therefore, taxometric analysis provides a more conservative test for an underlying categorical structure. A daily diary procedure was used to measure participants' day-to-day experiences of envy. The results support van de Ven et al.'s claim that benign envy exists, and that is distinct from malicious envy.