NOSACQ-50 for Safety Climate Assessment in Agricultural Activities: A Case Study in Central Italy

Abstract

Safety climate assessment has been recognized as a powerful tool to bring to light workers’ perceptions related to safety practices, attitudes and behaviors at the workplace. Accordingly, its investigation can provide useful information about safety problems within a company before accidents occur. In literature, numerous studies can be found investigating safety climates in different types of industry. However, safety climate assessment in agricultural activities is addressed scarcely, even though agriculture represents a very hazardous sector. To reduce this gap, the present study proposes an investigation of safety climate among farmers by means of the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50). The results of the survey brought to light a low level of safety perception of the interviewed sample, especially as concerns safety commitment and risk-taking attitudes. In particular, a different attitude toward safety issues has been registered depending on both the position and gender of the interviewed farmers. Overall, the output of this cross-sectional analysis adds to the current literature by expanding knowledge of safety climate among farmers, representing a baseline for further investigations based on human-centered approaches to enhance safety in agriculture and consequently social and workplace aspects of sustainable agricultural systems.

The relations of job stress dimensions to safety climate and accidents occurrence among the workers

“…So far, this questionnaire has been used in several studies with different purposes. For example, Fargnoli and Lombardi assessed the safety climate in agricultural activities using the NOSACQ-50 (Fargnoli and Lombardi, 2020). Marin et al also applied this questionnaire for evaluating the perceptions of safety climate across construction personnel (Marin et al, 2019).…”

Safety Climate and the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Investigation on Safety Perceptions among Farmers in Italy

“…In fact, together with the traditional NASACQ-50 questionnaire [7], additional items to elicit information regarding the impact of COVID-19 in working activities were implemented (COVID-19 questionnaire). In more detail, the first step of the analysis consisted of comparing new data on safety climate perceptions obtained by means of the NOSACQ-50 questionnaire to the ones derived from a previous study carried out in a similar context [8]. Then, the results of the COVID-19 questionnaire were screened and a correlation analysis was performed to evaluate how the different aspects of the safety climate perceptions were affected by the implementation of the specific OHS measures due to COVID-19.…”

“…Fargnoli and Lombardi [8] 2020 Agriculture Marín, L.S. et al [9] 2019 Construction Voon and Ariff [49] 2019 Teachers Lagerstrom et a.…”

“…In small-sized companies, managers are usually the owners of the companies that are involved in production activities, as in the study context. Safety climate evaluation represents a powerful tool to collect information regarding safety problems at the workplace, providing an effective way of addressing how to improve occupational health and safety [8][9][10]. In more detail, the present study aims to screen farmers' safety perceptions, providing an overview on how they are correlated with the additional OHS measures implemented at workplaces because of the pandemic.…”

“…In more detail, the present study aims to screen farmers' safety perceptions, providing an overview on how they are correlated with the additional OHS measures implemented at workplaces because of the pandemic. Accordingly, to better evaluate this aspect, a comparative analysis was made with the results of previous investigations carried out among similar companies when the emergency due to the COVID-19 outbreak was at its beginning [8]. Such an approach allowed us to bring to light changes in safety climate perceptions, pointing out worker-manager discrepancies in safety behavior and attitude.…”