Safety culture assessment and its relationship with the personality traits of sports facility managers

Background and aims: Great investments are made in many countries to provide the grounds for every member of the society to be benefited. However, the results of several studies show that many people suffer from multiple injuries and sometimes die as they are doing sports activities. Therefore, sport is one of the high-risk activities with many professional damages that apart from economic costs on the health, include very serious psychological costs on athletes, families in specific and the whole society, in general. Today, it is believed that most of the accidents (about 85 percent) are due to the errors and carelessness of the employees. Therefore, it seems that Improving the safety culture is a basic solution to reduce these accidents in sports events and fields. Safety culture refers to a set of beliefs, motifs, norms, roles and performances that reduce the encounter of employees and managers to dangerous situations. If the governing safety culture in an organization is positive and desirable, this culture, as an effective factor, can commit all elements of the organization to have a major contribution to the safety of themselves and their colleagues. Management is the key element in the safety culture. Management is the key element in safety culture. Managers play a key and essential role in improving the safety culture, preventing accidents and improving job performance and culturalization, and accelerating the process. Among factors affecting occupational performance is the individuals' personality because the individual personality determines his/ her motivation and attitude toward job and the way the individual responds to job requirements. The value of the personality has been accepted as one of the predictors of occupational and behavioral performance. According to the researchers, unsafe behaviors are highly influenced by individuals' personal traits because the individuals' personality traits determine their motifs and attitudes towards their job and how they meet job requirements. Therefore, individuals related to sensitive and safety-related conditions should be highly sensitive to observe safety principles proportionate to their characteristics and consider creating a positive safety culture as an essential issue in sports activities to reduce accidents effectively. Therefore, by identifying and investigating the personality dimensions of sports places managers, it can be used as a predictor of unsafe behaviors. In summary, paying attention to numerous risks in sports activities is essential and taking safety culture into consideration as a major priority is natural is sports. Considering the role and responsibility of sport field managers in safety and health of athletes, spectators and other visitors, the present study aims at evaluating the safety culture among sport field managers based on IAEA Model and its relationship with their Demographic characteristics and personality. This study aims at answering the following questions: first, how is safety culture among sport field managers? Second, what is the relationship between the positive safety culture and Demographic characteristics and personality of sport field managers (gender, being extroverted or introverted, and experience and education level)? Methods: This is an applied study in terms of purpose, a descriptive survey in terms of data collection methodology, and a correlation study in terms of data analysis. The research population includes all the sport field managers in Iran that consists of 22167 participants according to the statistics of the Development and Maintenance of Sports Facilities of Iran. The sample size included 379 participants based on the table of Krejcie and Morgan. Considering the level of errors due to not receiving complete questionnaires (the questionnaires being lost, not answering them, incomplete and invalid questionnaires), a number of 416 questionnaires were distributed and finally, 400 appropriate and flawless questionnaires were collected and analyzed. Multistage sampling was conducted on different provinces and cities and finally, the sample was selected using simple random sampling. The research tools included Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) (1968) and demographic variables including 25 questions and the Safety Culture Survey including 35 questions related to the field of learning and teaching, responsibility, safety priorities, leadership and safety integrity. To insure the face and content validity of the questionnaire, its first edition was investigated by the experts in the field and the required corrections were applied on the items according to experts' comments. The questionnaires were used after the experts confirmed them. The questionnaires' reliability was calculated to be 0.76 for the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and 0.82 for the Safety Culture Survey in a preliminary study by internal consistency through Chronbach's alpha. Descriptive statistics (frequency tables, frequency percentage, average and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (variance analysis, independent T-test, Pearson's correlation coefficient and logistic regression) were used for data analysis using SPSS 19 at the significance level of p > 0.05. Results: Demographic findings of the research showed that the majority of the statistical male sample (68.5) holds bachelor degree (44.5) and master degree (29.5). Results showed that the mean safety culture of sport field managers was 130.12 And its standard deviation was 21.5. The score above 105 is regarded as the positive safety culture. The independent T-test showed that the average score of safety culture is higher in women than men and the difference is significant according to the value of t + -2.970 at the significance level of P = 0.00. Results of ANOVA showed that although by the increase in the work experience, the level of safety culture increases, while no significant relationship was observed between the two variables (P = 0.657). Results of ANOVA showed that by an increase in education level, the positive safety culture increases, while the relationship was not significant statistically (P = 0.391). Eta correlation coefficient showed that there is a significant (P = 0.01) negative (r = - 0.19) relationship between being extroverted and the safety culture. Moreover, there is a significant (P 0.00) and direct (r = 0.29) relationship between being introverted and the safety culture. Considering the type of variables and using eta correlation coefficient to investigate the correlation between the variables, logistic regression was used to determine which variables are strong predictors of safety culture. For overall estimation of the model, omnibus test analysis was used. Omnibus test showed that the logistic regression model was significant. That is, it can predict the variables efficiently. The log-likelihood of logistic regression showed that the variables are 69 percent able to determine the dependent variable. The results of Hosmer-Lemeshow test (HL test) for regression fitting showed that the model is appropriate and fit well. This means that a series of variables have predicted the criterion variable. Therefore, the predictors of safety culture should be identified from among the variables. Results of odds ratio showed that the odd ratio of being introverted and extroverted is relatively good. The odds ratio equals beta (β) in linear regression. The ratio was significant with 0.39 for being extroverted and 0.48 for being introverted. In general, the more extroverted the person is, the safety culture increases and it is vice versa regarding being introverted. In this regard, classification of the average values of safety culture aspects showed that safety priority with an average value of 31.5 and responsibility with an average value of 24.2 had the greatest and smallest average values. Conclusion: Conclusion: The safety culture is an essential element to prevent accidents from occurring in sports places and events. In the view of researchers, the incidence of unsafe behaviors is greatly under the influence of personality traits of individuals, especially managers. Therefore, the current research aims to investigate the relationship between personality traits of sports places' managers and their safety culture. Results showed that the safety culture has a significant relationship with gender, extroversion, and introversion of managers, but has no significant relationship with work experience and education level. It seems that the more positive attitude of women towards occupational issues, psychological and personality traits, higher sensitivity to job safety issues and avoiding risks that makes them attempt to do the assigned tasks in the best way and the least risks, direct more attention to safety culture in women. In addition, unlike the extroverted people who are risk-taking and in search of excitement do not shoulder their responsibilities and believe that accidents are inevitable, the introverted are indecisive, thoughtful and cautious. The introverted believe that events and accidents are results of their actions and are more satisfied with their actions. Since the introverted are conditioned more and quicker, they adapt to the crowd and obey the rules. They pay more attention to the current rules of safety and follow the rules to develop positive safety culture and reduce unsafe actions. Accordingly, the safety culture is higher in the introverted than in the extroverted. Regarding the lack of effect of education level on mangers' safety culture, it can be stated that courses related to safety in PE is not taught in higher education in the field of physical education. Furthermore, during in-service courses, the training courses are held similarly for all the people at different education levels and this leads to the irrelevance of the awareness of managers and employees about safety and education level. Therefore, investigating different aspects of personality and safety culture, the efficiency in sports organizations can be improved and the accidents in sport events and fields can be reduced besides identifying and assigning people that pay less attention to safety culture to low-risk jobs. © 2020 Iran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Investigating the effect of light color temperature on selective attention, error and human reaction time

Background and aims: The reaction time of humans that affected by several factors includes the time that takes to stimulate the sensory organs and the stimulus effect is transmitted to the brain, then is perceived and the decision is made; consequently, the command resulting from the decision of the brain is sent from the brain to the functional organs. Failure to respond at the right time may result in human error and accidents. There are important factors that affect the reaction time. Attention is one of the important factors affecting the speed of the reaction. Selective attention and correct perception of several stimuli among the other stimuli is one of the effective factors in promoting performance and safety. Additionally, various environmental factors may be effective in determining selective attention, increasing the number of errors and the human response time in detecting triggers. Lighting is one of the factors affecting the processing mechanisms of the brain. In the design of indoor and outdoor lighting systems, the quality parameters of the lighting system are usually less considered. Color temperature is one of the most important qualitative parameters of light, which is measured by the Kelvin unit and is an indicator for the brightness and color of the light. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of light color temperature on selective attention, error rate and reaction time. Methods: This research is an interventional and laboratory study in order to determine the effect of the light color temperature on human error, selective attention, and reaction time of students in Tarbiat Modares University (TMU) of Tehran during the fall of 2018. All students were in the same age range. The inclusion criteria for this study were; not having any eye-related diseases, such as diminished vision and subtlety, and mental-psychiatric disorders. On the day before performing the test, participants were informed to: have enough sleep and rest, adhere to a regular diet, and avoid taking medicines, coffee and caffeinated drinks. In this interventional study, 92 students (36 female and 56 male) from Tarbiat Modarres University of Tehran with an average age of 28.33 years were recruited as subjects. The measurements and tests related to selective attention and reaction time of individuals were performed in 4 locations with an equal lighting system and different color temperatures (3500, 4000, 5000, or 6500 degrees Kelvin). In the first step of the study, in order to determine the effect of light color temperature on the studied parameters, the participants were randomly divided into four groups with 24 subjects in each group. Before the main test was being performed, the participants were kept in rooms adjusted to a brightness of 3500° K to rest for at least 5 minutes in order to be adapted to the situation, and then, in the same conditions, to become familiar with the test method they were studied with the Stroop software. In the second step, each group was placed in a separate room where the levels of brightness had been designed with one of the lighting systems to yield a color temperature of 3500, 4000, 5000, and 6500° K. Cognitive performance tests including reaction time, accuracy and selective attention were measured using Stroop tests. Measurement of score interference and time interference, which are indicators for selective attention, were calculated by measuring the difference in the error rate and the reaction time in detecting incongruent and consonant words. Stroop test was used to determine the reaction time, error and other parameters. This test consists of two parts; the practice and the main test, each of them has two stages. The first step is to name the color of circular shapes that appears on the laptop monitor screen. The participant, upon viewing the image, applies pressure on keyboard buttons which are labeled with colors corresponding to the ones on the screen. The second step is to name the word which appears in a white box. The names of the colors appear, and as soon as the correct word is recognized, the participant should press the color word associated to the word on the keyboard. The third step, which is the main stage of the test, is a non-consistent word (red-green-blue) that shown randomly and sequentially on the monitor's screen. The subject must only press the keyboard button with the same color, only emphasizing the color and regardless of its connotation. In this test, 48 consistent colored words (the color of the word is identical with the meaning of the word; red, yellow, green and blue) and 48 non-consistent colored words (the color of the word is not the same as the word meaning; for example, the blue word shown in red). The time lap between the stimulants was 800 milliseconds and the duration of each of them was 2000 milliseconds. The subject's task was to select the correct color only. Finally, the data were analyzed using SPSS software. Results: Based on the results of this study, the highest mean of correct selection (474.49 ± 10.65) and the lowest mean of the correct ones (654.49 ± 11.77) were assigned to the color temperature of 6500 and 3500 ° K, respectively. Also, the highest mean of error rate (15.65 ± 9.77) and the lowest mean of error rate (10.94 ± 9.4) were reported at a color temperature of 3500 and 6500 ° K, respectively. According to the results of this study, with increase in color temperature from 3500 to 5000° Kelvin, the number of questions that were not responded decreased. Likewise, the number of unanswered questions for the color temperature of 6500 °K slightly increased compared to the color temperature of 5000 and 4000 °K. The results also indicated that, with an increase in color temperature from 3500 to 6500 °K, the reaction time to visual stimuli also decreased. The highest interference score was in the light color temperature of 3500 °K which indicates that the number of faults in naming inconsistent words relative to consonant words was higher in color temperature of 3500° K compared to other color temperatures. Also, according to Fig. 3, the maximum interference time was at 6500 ° K. This indicates that the performance time of the subjects in naming inconsistent words was higher relative to consonants in color temperature of 6,500° K compared to other color temperatures. Although the average response time under lighting condition with color temperature of 6500° K (718.95 ± 65.33) was less than the color temperature of 3500° K (728.58 ± 43.48), according to the results of the study, with a decrease in color temperature, the increase in mean response time was observed, but this difference was not significant (p p). Also, based on independent t-test (Table 2), there was a significant relationship between subjects' gender and variables such as interference score, interference time and number of unanswered questions. For all of these three variables (interference score, interference time and number of unanswered questions) mean in men was significantly lower than women (p <0.05). Based on subjects' gender, the average response time under different color temperatures showed that the response time (or reaction time) of female under lighting conditions with 3000 and 5,000 ° K was higher than male, while under lighting conditions with 4000 and 6500° K the response time of male was higher than female students. Although the average response time under different color temperatures was different between male and female subjects, based on the results of independent t-test, such difference was not significant. Conclusion: In general, the results of this study showed that when subjects are exposed to light color temperature of 6,500 ° K, the number of correct responses by them is higher than those exposed to other color temperatures, and with increasing the color temperature, the number of correct answers increases. Also, according to the results of this study, the error rate decrease by increasing color temperature of light source. Based on the results of this study, it is suggested to make use of light sources with a color temperature of 6,500 ° K in designing the lighting system of the places where human reaction time and error are high importance. Accordingly, it is recommended to repeat this study in other demographic groups, as well as taking into account the qualitative parameters of the lighting system in addition to its quantitative parameters. © 2020 Iran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved