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Fishers’ attributed causes of accidents and implications for prevention education

University of British Columbia

Commercial fishers are employed in one of the most dangerous jobs in Canada. Additionally, they tend both not to report work injuries and to deny and trivialize risks their job entails. This study focuses on fishers' subjective interpretation of their work environment. Its purposes were to examine fishers' attributed causes of accidents and to derive implications for prevention education. The researcher employed a qualitative methodology and interviewed 12 professional fishers who worked on the British Columbia coast. The interviews focused on fishers' descriptions of accidents and their attributed causes. Attribution theory was operationalized to provide a conceptual framework through which to analyze the 12 transcripts. The researcher transcribed the interviews, then highlighted and analyzed excerpts depicting the fishers' attributed causes of accidents. Three strategies were employed to examine the trustworthiness of the researcher's judgements regarding the transcripts and final interpretation of the data. The strategies were: use of a research partner (consistency), conducting a participant review (credibility), and comparison with another study (triangulation). The participants of this study attributed multiple causes to a given accident and their explanations were complex. The study found 22 categories of causes of accidents. The attributed causes from 9 of the 12 participants were distributed in all quadrants of attributions on the orienting framework (external/stable, external/unstable, internal/stable and internal/unstable). Five or more participants attributed the following as causes in their accidents: Economic Pressures, Luck or Fate, Weather Conditions Expected, Fatigue, and Stress. This study's results suggest that the techno-rational approach of existing traditional training programs, that concentrate on causes located mainly in the external/stable quadrant, does not concur with fishers' attributed causes of accidents. The study indicates that prevention education program content should be broadened to address the full spectrum of fishers' attributed causes of accidents. Through the utilization of fishers' attributed causes of accidents, prevention education programs could assist fishers to focus on their perceptions of occupational hazards and risks, and address questions of past risk taking and future risk assessment. From these insights fishers can review what can be done to control or eliminate a particular risk.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-06-16

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9286

Administrative, Adult and Higher Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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