Jin Lee, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kansas State University, will present his research examining the moderating effect of safety climate strength (degree of perceptual agreement/consensus) among workgroup members on the relationship between safety climate level and safety behavior.

 

Data from 2,043 electrical utility workers across 183 workgroups in two companies were analyzed. A significant interaction between safety climate strength and level was found, such that weaker safety climate strength tended to attenuate the safety climate level and safety behavior relationship. This moderation effect remained significant when potential alternatives of safety climate strength, such as workers’ company tenure both at individual- and workgroup-levels, task independence, and individualistic tasks, were individually introduced to the model. In addition, the lowest within-workgroup safety climate perception scores had a greater moderating effect on the safety climate level and safety behavior relationship than the highest within-workgroup safety climate perception scores. Conjoint management of safety climate level and strength may be needed for more effective promotion of workplace safety.

 

Dr. Lee received his PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology with an emphasis on occupational health psychology from the Psychology Department of University of Connecticut in 2014. Since then, he led his own research project and taught courses at the School of Public Health and Medical School at Harvard University as a postdoctoral research fellow before joining Kansas State University.His research focuses primarily on workplace safety, health, and well-being. Specifically, he holds research interests in safety climate assessment and management in high-risk industries, analysis of risk perception styles of temporary workers, occupational safety and health disparity, work system improvement through the perspectives of socio-technical systems approach, and application of advanced quantitative methodology in multidisciplinary research efforts.Currently, he is the principal investigator for two research projects on occupational safety management; one funded by Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety and the other funded by Kansas State University.