Development of a safety program for the retail employees of the liquified petroleum gas industry

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to identify the leading causes of accidents involving the retail employees of the LPG industry in Texas, analyze the actual causes of these accident-producing tasks, and develop an instructional system, based on these findings, which would supply the employee with the basic procedures required to perform the tasks safely. Each presentation was based on actual accidents involving the LPG employees of the state. All accident data were obtained from claims submitted to the Association Insurance Agency of Austin, Texas. Each claim was analyzed and the actual cause of the accident was documented. The accidents were then placed into categories based on the actual cause of each happening. The primary accident-producing tasks performed by LPG employees were identified. Each identified task was researched and the procedures required to perform the task safely were observed. Six narrated slide presentations were developed to explain the safe procedures to the LPG employees. A test was developed to measure each employee's cognition of the procedures required to perform these tasks safely. A non-randomized control group pretest-posttest design was used to investigate the null hypotheses which stated: there will be no significant difference in the group mean scores on the individual tests and/or the total test, representing cognition of participants, between the experimental and control groups. A significance level of .05 was established for rejecting the hypothesis. Mean pretest scores were computed from scores collected from participants of both groups and used to indicate the employee's entering knowledge of the procedures required to perform each task safely. Members of the treatment group viewed each narrated slide presentation. Participants in the control group did not view the presentations. Participants in both groups were asked to respond to the same questions on a posttest. Posttest mean scores were calculated for both groups.