Search Results (1,459)

Firefighters and correctional workers are highly exposed to potentially traumatic events, but research shows that resiliency training may help support their mental health. Both occupations remain men-dominated and highly masculinized, creating challenges for women public safety personnel (PSP) and reinforcing stigma about mental health as a feminized topic. This exploratory qualitative study examines the gender dynamics of peer resiliency training for firefighters and correctional officers in Canada. Based on interviews with 10 trainers from three provinces, we developed three key themes. First, mental health is constructed as a “feminine” topic, which may create access barriers for men, but also for women who wish to avoid marginalization. Second, gendered beliefs shape perceptions of trainers’ credibility and skills. Men trainers are respected for performing masculinity, while respect for women trainers stems from stereotypes about their maternal “nature”. Such beliefs may increase respect for mental health topics while further entrenching gendered stereotypes. Third, a gender stereotyping paradox exists regarding the roles of women in these occupations. That is, mental health training may provide a leadership pathway for women PSP while simultaneously “pigeonholing” them into emotional-labour roles. We conclude that peer resiliency training is best positioned as the responsibility of both men and women. Full article

Background: Safety climate is widely used to explain and prevent occupational accidents in industrial settings; however, the field remains conceptually fragmented, with multiple measurement instruments coexisting without consensus on the core dimensions that define the construct, limiting the comparability of findings and the effectiveness of organizational interventions. Objectives: This study aims to identify, organize, and synthesize the determinants of safety climate reported in validated instruments applied in industrial settings through a systematic literature review. Methods: The review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, with searches performed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, resulting in the inclusion of 27 empirical studies published between 2015 and 2025. Dimensions reported in the instruments were extracted, grouped by conceptual similarity, and integrated into a common structure. The synthesis examined determinant recurrence across instruments and interpreted the findings in light of the psychometric quality of the measures, as assessed using the COSMIN framework. Results: The results indicate that despite the diversity of scales, safety climate determinants derived from measurement instruments consistently converge into four domains: Health and Safety Management, Organizational Safety Resources, Worker Involvement, and Working Conditions. The convergence of these domains across independent instruments, considered alongside the methodological robustness of their validation procedures, indicates a conceptually coherent structural core predominantly supported by instruments with confirmatory structural validation. Conclusions: By integrating conceptual structure and measurement quality, this study contributes to reducing fragmentation in the literature and provides an empirical basis for the development, adaptation, and selection of safety climate instruments, with direct implications for research and safety management in industrial environments. Full article

In recent decades, profound transformations in work organization, employment conditions, and organizational change processes have intensified workers’ exposure to psychosocial risks, with significant consequences for occupational health and well-being. Despite the growing relevance of these risks, organizations often lack psychometrically robust instruments capable of capturing psychosocial stressors associated with change, Conflicts, and working conditions in an integrated manner. The purpose of this study was to develop and psychometrically evaluate a questionnaire designed to measure psychosocial factors related to organizational changes, interpersonal Conflicts, and occupational well-being. An instrumental study design was employed, following international standards for the construction and validation of psychological instruments. The sample consisted of 350 workers with a mean age of 33.19 years (SD = 9.18; range: 18–66) and an average organizational tenure of 6.71 years (SD = 8.61). The initial 48-item questionnaire was refined to a final version comprising 24 items distributed across 7 scales: Organizational Changes, Work Program, Job Security, Promotion, Training, Interpersonal Conflicts, and Lack of Participation. Preliminary analyses indicated that the data adequately met the assumptions for factor analysis (KMO = 0.81; Bartlett’s test χ² = 4376.98, p < 0.001). The results supported a seven-factor structure explaining 72% of the total variance, with clear and interpretable factor loadings consistent with the theoretical model. Internal consistency was acceptable to excellent across scales (α = 0.72–0.91; ω = 0.84–0.95), including short scales with three items. Inter-scale correlations were low to moderate, supporting discriminant validity and indicating that the dimensions, while related, represent distinct constructs. Overall, the findings provide strong evidence for the instrument’s reliability and validity based on its internal structure, supporting its use for psychosocial risk assessment and research on organizational changes, interpersonal Conflicts, and occupational well-being. Full article

Forestry projects have long faced the inherent tension between stringent conservation objectives and the enhancement of human well-being, making it increasingly important to assess the sustainable livelihoods of participating households. The Natural Forest Management Project in the Northeast and Inner Mongolia state-owned forest region (NSFR) aims to transform high-quality ecological products and services into inclusive public benefits while providing reasonable compensation for ecological conservation and restoration efforts. This approach seeks to achieve synergies among ecological protection, economic development, and livelihood improvement. Drawing on six consecutive years (2017–2022) of longitudinal micro-level household survey data, this study quantifies the sustainable livelihood levels of households participating in natural forest management. A Natural Forest Involvement (NFI) index was constructed to measure their degree of participation. Furthermore, the well-being effects of frontline participants in natural forest management activities were investigated. The findings indicate that the overall sustainable livelihood capital of these households shows a steady upward trend across NSFR, significant disparities exist among different areas. Moreover, approximately half of forestry worker households are deeply embedded in the natural forest management system, and this engagement pattern negatively affects households’ sustainable livelihood capital. These results not only enrich the empirical literature on forestry project effectiveness but also offer relevant insights for forestry project design and policy formulation in other developing countries. Full article

The digital economy has reshaped the structure and operation of the labor market through profound technological changes, exerting systematic impacts on the quality of flexible employment. Based on five consecutive periods of data from the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) between 2014 and 2022, a multidimensional, flexible employment quality indicator system is constructed to empirically examine the effects, heterogeneity, and mechanisms of the digital economy on flexible employment quality. This study shows that the digital economy has significantly improved the overall quality of flexible employment. Specifically, male, low-skilled, young, and flexible workers with a low dependency ratio on the northwest side of the Hu-Huan-Yong Line benefit more significantly. Mechanism testing results indicate that industrial structure optimization, human capital accumulation, and improved matching efficiency are important intermediary pathways through which the digital economy enhances the quality of flexible employment. The conclusion indicates that amplifying the positive empowerment effect of the digital economy on the quality of flexible employment, implementing targeted policies, and activating three indirect transmission pathways—industrial structure, human capital, and supply–demand matching efficiency—are key measures to enhance the quality of flexible employment. Full article

Safety monitoring of scaffolding operations is essential for preventing accidents in high-altitude construction. This study proposes an integrated computer vision and multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) framework that combines object detection, pose estimation, Analytic Network Process (ANP) and ELECTRE III methods to evaluate safety risks of construction workers. Specifically, computer vision techniques are employed to extract objective visual evidence related to workers’ behaviors, protective equipment (PPE) usage, and working environments, which serve as the basis for subsequent safety risk quantification. A four-criterion system, including action risk, PPE compliance, working height, and structural integrity, is established. Weights are determined via the ANP, and risk ranking is conducted using ELECTRE III. Experiments on a self-built dataset achieved an mAP@0.5 of 92.3%, a segmentation IoU of 67.2%, and a pose OKS@0.5 of 89.6%. The evaluation results correlate strongly with expert assessments (Kendall’s τ = 0.79). The proposed framework effectively identifies unsafe behaviors and quantifies safety risks, providing reliable decision support for intelligent construction safety management. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed substantial variation in vaccine attitudes and susceptibility to misinformation, raising concerns from an occupational health perspective about potential differences across employment sectors. This study examined associations between employment category and pandemic-related changes in mental health, and vaccine-related misinformation among adults in Poland. Data were collected between 13 January and 14 February 2022 using a cross-sectional online survey. Complete questionnaires from 7018 respondents were analyzed. Employment category (services, industry, agriculture, unemployed) was examined in relation to self-reported changes in sleep, mental health, physical activity, and diet. A misinformation index was constructed based on agreement with eight vaccine-related misinformation statements. Overall, 81.8% of participants reported being vaccinated. Employment category was significantly associated with perceived changes in sleep, mental health, and diet. The misinformation index was consistently higher among unvaccinated individuals across all employment groups, with the largest differences observed among the unemployed and agricultural workers. These findings show a strong link between vaccine misinformation and remaining unvaccinated, highlighting the need for targeted occupational health education and reliable health information. Increasing vaccination coverage therefore requires not only vaccine availability but also systematic efforts to counteract misinformation and strengthen digital health literacy across occupational groups. Full article

Tracking worker identities across cameras is increasingly important for advanced construction site monitoring, such as safety and productivity monitoring. However, current computer vision-based tracking faces challenges in reliably associating worker identities due to frequent occlusions and extreme viewpoint shifts between aerial and ground cameras, resulting in fragmented trajectories and ID switches. This study proposes a Dual-Stage Graph-based Association framework that integrates worker detections across multiple views using complementary Re-identification models and camera-aware adaptive thresholding. The framework synergistically combines TransReID for viewpoint-invariant global features and BPBReID for occlusion-robust part-based features, producing more discriminative representations. Data association leverages a graph-based clustering approach to combine representation features, camera topology, and temporal cues for robust identity maintenance. The first stage enables cross-view clustering while preventing false matches, and the second stage ensures long-term identity stability through EMA-based gallery management. Experiments on two construction sites demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves an HOTA of 39.85% and an IDF1 of 63.58%, outperforming existing baselines while reducing ID switches by 35.0%. Results on the AG-ReID.v2 benchmark demonstrate strong generalization with 90.82% Rank-1 accuracy in aerial-to-CCTV matching. The approach highlights initial feasibility for cross-view multi-camera tracking in construction with potential for extension to more complex industrial environments. Full article

Hazard recognition on construction sites is crucial for ensuring worker safety. Traditional methods widely rely on expert assessments, on-site inspections, and checklists, which can be time-consuming and susceptible to human error. The integration of multimodal Large Language Models (LLMs), such as GPT-based systems, offers a promising opportunity to overcome these limitations. Therefore, this study evaluates the effectiveness of GPT-4o in recognizing workplace hazards from image inputs, with a specific focus on construction sites. The results indicate that the model can serve as a valuable decision-support tool for safety professionals by providing scalable and real-time insights. However, the study also highlights key limitations, including the model’s reliance on general visual features rather than domain-specific safety knowledge, and the continued need for human supervision. Additionally, ethical concerns, including bias in AI-generated hazard assessments, data privacy, and the risk of over-reliance on AI, must be carefully managed to ensure these tools contribute responsibly and effectively to proactive risk management strategies. Full article

The paper aims to explore the relationship between emotions and reflexivity, with reference to the constructs of critical reflexivity and emotional granularity. These two constructs and their operationalization constitute the theoretical–methodological background of an empirical exploratory research study conducted on a sample of adult workers aged between 18 and 55, who were subjected to a diarist-style reflective writing course. The overall aim of the course was to ascertain whether, how and to what extent reflective practices of the narrative type can influence and modulate the stress response, both from the point of view of the participants’ assumption of awareness and from the point of view of the adoption of new behaviors. The central question that the present article proposes to discuss is related to the exploration of what the basic requirements/skills are on which the development of critical reflexivity is built over time, with particular attention to the role played by emotional competencies. This aspect represents one of the most relevant gaps in current research on critical reflexivity, which is severely limited by a general tendency towards the hyper-cognization of the models of analysis adopted in much of the research devoted to reflexivity, as well as by the little space given to the investigation of the emotional dynamics at play in its onset processes. The study carried out represents an initial exploration of this aspect, testing two main hypotheses: (a) the possibility of identifying and describing a preliminary threshold to the manifest development of critical reflexivity, prior to the development of process reflexivity; (b) the possibility that crossing this threshold may be facilitated by the acquisition of a good level of emotional competence, measurable through the emotional granularity construct. In the light of the quali-quantitative analyses carried out on the diaristic corpus, the hypotheses put forward have all been confirmed, consolidating the line of research aimed at investigating the role played by emotional competence in the development of critical reflexivity, in interaction and combination with the increasingly complex structuring of the cognitive processes underlying reflexivity. Full article

The Saudi construction industry relies heavily on a multinational workforce, raising safety concerns under high productivity demands. Although productivity pressure is widely assumed to influence workers’ risk perception and unsafe behavior, empirical evidence directly testing this assumption in culturally diverse construction settings remains limited. This study examines whether perceived productivity pressure predicts risk perception among construction workers from different national backgrounds working on the same project. Survey data were collected from 247 construction workers representing five nationalities on a university construction site in Saudi Arabia. Correlation analysis, regression modeling, and linear mixed-effects models were used to assess the relationship between productivity pressure and risk perception while controlling for age and nationality. The results show that perceived productivity pressure does not significantly influence workers’ risk perception, and this relationship is not moderated by age or nationality. Although cultural adjustment differed significantly across national groups, nationality did not alter the pressure risk perception relationship. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions in construction safety research and suggest that productivity pressure may affect unsafe behavior through mechanisms other than cognitive risk appraisal. The study contributes empirical evidence from a controlled multicultural setting and highlights the need for safety interventions that extend beyond productivity pressure management to address decision-making processes, communication, and risk assessment competencies within multinational construction workforces. Full article

Construction safety has garnered extensive attention, among which the hoisting construction safety of prefabricated buildings constitutes a distinct concern warranting further focus, as it fundamentally differs from traditional cast-in situ construction. However, relevant studies remain relatively scarce, and there is a lack of research frameworks that enable the multi-dimensional comprehensive assessment of the significance of influencing factors. This study aims to comprehensively account for both the mechanisms of influence and the inherent importance of factors, thereby determining the significance of the influencing factors for hoisting construction safety in prefabricated buildings. Fifteen influencing factors were identified, and the fuzzy-DEMATEL and ANP methods were adopted, respectively to investigate the inter-factor mechanisms of influence and the systemic importance of these factors. This study finds that: at the level of the influence mechanism, factors such as workers’ behavior and construction process control play a core hub role in the system; management factors and external environments are the primary factors affecting workers’ behavior, and workers’ behavior tends to influence physical factors and construction site coordination; at the level of system importance, factor weights show a stepped distribution, among which management personnel competence is the most important factor; factors such as policies and regulations, as well as safety assurance plans, are also relatively significant. A comprehensive analysis of the two calculation results reveals that construction process control is the most critical factor, followed by workers’ behavior, the competence of management personnel, and construction operation coordination. Drawing on the functions of these factors, a series of recommendations was put forward, covering the aspects of safety resource allocation, safety training, and safety supervision. The present study facilitates a more comprehensive evaluation of the importance levels of each influencing factor and delivers practically accessible guidance for safety management in the hoisting operation of prefabricated buildings. Full article

Forestry operations expose workers to a high risk of health constraints, accidents, and injuries. We are trying to protect them and implement many effective countermeasures; nevertheless, the development of new forestry machines remains a long process, with limited safety and ergonomic feedback, usually provided only at a late stage in the design process. In this study, we propose a practical digital ergonomics workflow that combines inertial motion capture, standardized risk scoring, and digital human modelling to improve and shorten human-centered and safer design of forestry machinery. We validated the approach in a field pilot on a prototype milling–spraying device for standing trees. Two experienced operators performed a full work-cycle (carry → install → operate → dismantle → return), during which their whole-body kinematics were captured in real forest conditions. These were then evaluated using kinematic metrics, RULA, OWAS, and a heart-rate-based load index. Based on these ergonomical and risk findings, we translate motion-derived risk ‘hotspots’ into real redesign targets (grip/handle geometry, weight distribution, support elements, and control layout), outlining an updated forestry-specific DHM/HDT (digital human modeling; human digital twin) framework that explicitly incorporates terrain and environmental constraints to accelerate the iteration of safer prototypes. The updated digital modeling framework will be used in the design of the new, more complex machine—“Semi-autonomous system for optimizing degraded soils by deep injection”. This machine contains a much more complex and advanced structure, including a tractor with an attachment tool for specialized deep soil injection. We suppose that using motion capture data, human digital twins, and digital human models can effectively support designing and the development process to avoid human-related construction nonconformities of this complex machine even before the final machine prototype is produced for functional field testing. Full article

One of the most important priorities of the most recent research work regarding the professional appraisal (PA) process is to understand different aspects of the social workers’ satisfaction with this particular type of professional evaluation. In this sense, this study addresses the imperative to comprehensively understand social workers’ satisfaction with PA, a pivotal yet sensitive human resource instrument within public administration. Drawing on a sociological survey of social workers in Romania’s North-West Development Region, the research empirically validated a multidimensional theoretical model of PA satisfaction (PAS) through rigorous exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The findings definitively establish that PAS is not a unidimensional construct, but rather a complex phenomenon underpinned by three distinct dimensions: (1) satisfaction with the most recent performance rating; (2) satisfaction with the appraisal system; and (3) satisfaction with the rater. This validated model significantly advances the conceptualization of satisfaction regarding PA, providing a precise diagnostic instrument for identifying systemic inefficiencies. Consequently, it offers a strategic framework for targeted organizational interventions and informs the development of more equitable and growth-oriented public policies. The study highlights that holistic measurement across these identified dimensions is crucial for cultivating employee motivation, reinforcing organizational justice, and fostering sustainable professional development within the public sector. Full article

Rockbursts are one of the most critical geomechanical hazards during the construction of deep tunnels under high in situ stress conditions, as they can compromise worker safety, damage infrastructure, and disrupt excavation continuity. Despite extensive research on rockburst mechanisms and mitigation, the causal analysis of individual events remains challenging due to the complex interaction between seismicity, geological conditions, stress redistribution, and operational factors. This study proposes a structured and multidisciplinary methodology for the causal analysis of rockbursts in deep high-stress tunnels. The methodology integrates seismicity analysis, geological and geotechnical characterization, operational assessment, field damage inspection, and hypothesis-driven interpretation to systematically reconstruct the sequence of processes leading to rockburst occurrence. The proposed approach is applied to a rockburst that occurred in 2020 in the Conveyor Belt tunnel (TC) of the Andes Norte Project, El Teniente Division, Codelco (Chile). The event reached a local magnitude of Mw = 1.7 and caused significant damage to tunnel support systems. Results indicate that the rockburst was associated with excavation- and blasting-induced stress redistribution, leading to the activation of a sub-horizontal rupture plane and subsequent damage propagation toward the excavated tunnel. The methodology provides a transparent and adaptable analytical framework for integrating multidisciplinary data into a coherent causal interpretation. Although demonstrated using a competent and brittle rock mass, the framework can be adapted to other deep tunneling projects under high-stress conditions by adjusting the governing parameters according to site-specific geological, geomechanical, and operational characteristics. The proposed approach supports improved understanding of rockburst mechanisms and informed decision-making for seismic risk management in deep underground excavations. Full article