Teenage employees play accidents at work
New research suggests that we may have to raise previous estimates of the proportion of teenage workers who have accidents.
This
is the conclusion of Seonaid Anderson, Jim McKechnie and Sandy Hobbs of
the Child Employment Research Group at the University of Paisley. They
present their findings on Saturday 25 November 2006 at the British
Psychological Society’s Scottish Branch Annual Conference held in Perth.
They
issued questionnaires to 544 Year 10 students (approximate age 15) in
Cumbria. 44 per cent of them said that they currently had part time
jobs. Of those working, 38 per cent said that they had had an accident
at work. This was in line with earlier research findings on accidents
to school-aged workers.
However, the researchers then interviewed 55 of the young workers to further explore their experiences in their jobs. The number reporting accidents rose to 83 per cent.
The
researchers suggest that there are two main reasons for the
discrepancy. First, the teenagers tend to filter out accidents that
they consider trivial, for example: "I’ve maybe slipped off the bike
when it’s icy. That was just last week but anyway it wasn’t bad…"
Secondly,
they do not consider an incident an "accident" if they felt they were
personally responsible, for example:"It wasn’t that bad and it’s really
my fault if I was careless."
The researchers also found that those youngsters who had been involved in an accident tend to have a lower risk perception.
They
suggest their findings have implications for studying accidents at
work. They also argue that there is a need for greater awareness of
teenage workers’ health and safety. There may be a need for more
training in health and safety issues.
PR1126
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