Research Initiation: Improved Safety Awareness for Future Engineers: Cultivating Safety Attitude among Engineering Graduates

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Even though safety is a critical element of engineering education and profession, the awareness about safety topics remains limited, which impacts the safety attitudes of individuals and safety culture of the organizations. The importance of safety education in engineering has been well-recognized by academic institutions, accreditation bodies, and professional societies. However, there is limited attention and time allocated to safety education in most undergraduate engineering programs, and there is limited understanding of the existing safety awareness levels among undergraduate engineering students. This project aims to understand the current safety awareness level and attitudes of undergraduate engineering technology students and the factors influencing them, develop an educational intervention to improve students’ safety knowledge, and examine the impact of this intervention on students’ safety awareness and attitudes. While traditional workplace safety interventions experience implementation challenges due to resistance from employees, educating students about safety before they enter the workforce can have a lasting influence on organizational safety culture. Engaging in the proposed theoretically grounded educational intervention will help students to develop metacognitive skills to better identify safety risks and develop strategies to mitigate those risks in their future careers. The results from this project will support the professional formation of engineers by improving their safety knowledge and attitudes by engaging them in hand-on learning environment and, in the long-term, produce engineering and technology graduates who create a safer work environment and products for society. This project’s broader impacts include cultivating a safety-conscious future workforce, providing open-source safety education modules for widespread use, and advancing the integration of safety into engineering curricula. This project will utilize a mixed-methods research design will be used to answer the following research questions: RQ1: How do engineering students’ attitudes towards safety in engineering contexts change from baseline to after an educational intervention? RQ2: What is the relationship between students’ prior exposure to safety incidents (direct, indirect or no experience) and their safety attitude? RQ3: How do students describe the changes in their attitudes towards engineering safety after completing the learning activities? RQ4: How can student attitudes toward engineering safety be categorized into distinct groups after completing the learning activities? This project will use a design-based research framework to develop the safety educational intervention and examine its effectiveness. The educational intervention will include interactive online learning module, site visit, and expert lectures, covering (a) basic safety concepts, (b) hazard identification and risk analysis (c) multi-dimensional accident causation analysis, and (d) accident prevention mechanisms. The project will be carried out in three phases. In the first phase, the educational intervention will be developed followed by a pilot study to gather student feedback to refine the materials. In the second phase, the revised module will be implemented in a senior capstone course, where students will also participate in a site visit and attend invited talks by safety experts to enhance their practical understanding. The third phase will focus on analyzing the collected data and disseminating the findings. The primary impact of this project is to foster safety-focused attitudes among students through the use of interactive modules integrated with experiential learning opportunities such as site visits and expert talks. Throughout the learning process, students will engage in structured reflection activities that deepen their understanding of safety engineering concepts and connect classroom instruction to real-world contexts. The project will provide a foundation for educators to integrate safety concepts into the undergraduate engineering and technology curricula. The findings from this project will inform which teaching mechanisms are more effective for safety education and the extent to which they can influence the safety attitudes of individuals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.