Is There an Estimation Bias in Occupational Health and Safety Surveys? The Mode of Administration and Informants as a Source of Error

Yvonne Fondevila-McDonald, Emília Molinero-Ruiz, Montse Vergara-Duarte, Montserrat Guillén, Laia Ollé-Espluga, María Menéndez and Joan Benach

Sociological Methods & Research, 2019, vol. 48, issue 1, 185-201

Abstract: Information quality deficiencies have been detected in occupational safety and health surveys in Europe, which typically gather self-reported data responded by employers or their representatives. For instance, their low response rates and informant profiles make estimations on establishments with safety representatives (SRs) unreliable. We tested the mode of administration and informants as sources of error regarding establishments with SRs in Catalonia, Spain. Two sources of information were compared: the Second Catalan Survey of Working Conditions 2011 (IICSWC)—with a methodology similar to surveys conducted at the state and European level—and the Progam on Prevention of Risks Management in Companies (PPRMC)—in which the labor authority collected data using a documentary verification in another sample of establishments. Percentage of establishments with SRs was estimated using the data from the PPRMC and also the differences in percentage between sources and informant profiles (with 95 percent confidence interval). Results show that the IICSWC overestimates the percentage of establishments with SRs.

Keywords: estimation bias; data quality; employee participation; information systems; occupational health; survey research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0049124116672681 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:48:y:2019:i:1:p:185-201

DOI: 10.1177/0049124116672681

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sociological Methods & Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().