Social cognitive factors in workplace accident investigations : the role of the eyewitness

Abstract

Workplace accidents compromise the health and well-being of employees as well as impact the financial resources of companies. The workplace accident investigation plays an important role in preventing future accidents by determining direct and contributing causes, implementing corrective action to those causes, and raising safety awareness. Little is known regarding how such investigations are conducted, but the implicit assumption is that witnesses to a workplace accident are neutral and accurate . This thesis is the first to investigate eyewitness memory for industrial accidents. Specifically, I examined the effectiveness of interview style on eyewitness recall for a workplace accident. Witness reports were made on either the Standard investigation form employed by industry (Mongomery, 1996) or a psychologically-based investigation form derived from the Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). Results indicate that, as hypothesised, significantly more accurate information was derived from participants completing the Cognitive Interview investigation form compared to those completing the Standard investigation form. The confidence and accuracy correlation for witnesses in both conditions was positive; however, those witnesses completing the Standard investigation form had significantly higher confidence in the accuracy of their results. Additionally, witnesses participated in three realistic post-event situations (filler task, think, discussion). Witnesses who were asked to think about the workplace accident that they saw were found to have a significantly stronger confidence rating than those in the filler task condition. Thus, these results suggest that the CI may be a useful tool in workplace accident investigations.