Understanding Construction Safety: Exploring Relationships between Individual-level Perceptions of Team Construct
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Yin, Qin
- Graduate Program:
- Architectural Engineering
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 01, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Julian Wang, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Susan Simkins, Outside Field Member
James LeBreton, Outside Unit Member
Yuqing Hu, Major Field Member
Esther Obonyo, Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- construction safety
teamwork - Abstract:
- This dissertation explores the relationship between key teamwork constructs and safety performance in the construction industry. The key constructs include psychological safety, mutual trust, collective efficacy, situation awareness, and shared mental models. In the first part, a systematic literature review was firstly conducted to identify relevant research in the construction domain. Then, drawing on insights from organizational psychology, a theoretical framework tailored to the construction context was proposed. In the second part, a pilot study explored the relationships between individual perceptions of team constructs and safety performance. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were utilized to assess these relationships at the individual perception level. The results indicate that individual perceived collective efficacy, situation awareness, and shared mental models are significantly associated with both individual and team safety performance. However, mutual trust was not found to be significantly related to safety performance. Additionally, psychological safety was excluded from the analysis due to low reliability, suggesting the need for scale adaptation to better suit the construction setting. This study attempts to bridge a gap by integrating concepts from organizational psychology with construction safety practices, and makes two main contributions. Firstly, it advances the understanding of team-level safety in construction by proposing an integrative framework. The framework could serve as a foundation for future studies on team-level safety in construction. Secondly, this study provides a preliminary empirical test of how individual perceptions of team constructs relate to safety outcomes in construction. While the study's cross-sectional design and individual-level measurement present limitations, the finding highlights the potential for improving safety through teamwork interventions. Areas for further research include exploring the input factors in the framework and refining measurement tools through pilot testing and validation. Overall, this dissertation provides valuable insights into the role of team dynamics in construction safety performance, laying the groundwork for ongoing research and practical interventions to enhance safety outcomes in the industry.