Does the Year-End Decline in Injury Risk Reflect Reporting Error?

作者：Pierce Brooks^*

来源：American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2015, 58(5): 519-527.

DOI：10.1002/ajim.22440

• occupational safety
• work-related injury
• Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses
• OSHA recordkeeping
• seasonality
• under-reporting

BackgroundRelatively little is known about seasonal patterns in occupational injury risk. Injury risk may vary seasonally due to weather-related factors or changing work exposure. Employer confusion about recordkeeping rules and injury occurrence near year end may also lead to an undercount of year-end injuries. <br xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets">MethodsCase records from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries were used to determine seasonality for a variety of injury types.
ResultsReported injury rates were higher in summer and lower at year end. Difficult-to-identify injuries showed greater year-end incidence declines.
ConclusionsEnd-of-year injury declines may have reflected reporting errors for some injury types. The summertime increase in injury risk was broad-based and presumably reflected real seasonal factors. Am. J. Ind. Med. 58:519-527, 2015.

• 出版日期2015-5