August 7, 2002—Ergonomics and behavioral safety in the workplace were the winning topics of this year’s American Society of Safety Engineers’ (ASSE) Professional Paper Awards given at its annual conference in June 2002.
John Kamp, Ph.D., of Thousand Oaks, CA, received first place on the topic on behavioral safety, Clarence C. Rodrigues, Ph.D., PE, CSP, CPE, of Daytona Beach, FL, received second place on the topic on ergonomics, and E. Scott Geller, Ph.D., of Blacksburg, VA, received third place for his paper on behavioral safety.
Each year the ASSE Editorial Review Board selects the best original published papers featured in ASSE’s Professional Safety Journal. The award recipients received $500, $400, and $300 respectively. Every month the journal provides in-depth articles aimed at promoting the advancement of the safety profession, focusing on innovative research and analysis of successful real-world applications.
Dr. Kamp’s paper, “It’s Time to Drag Behavioral Safety into the Cognitive Era,” explains the early concepts and main ideas behind behavioral safety, cognitive psychology, and behaviorism to better understand why employees do or do not make an extra effort to work safely. Dr. Rodrigues’s paper, “Ergonomics to the Rescue: A Cost-Justification Case Study,” focuses on a firm in the process of changing its business approach, which included developing an effective ergonomics program to reduce fines and workers’ compensation costs. The case study demonstrated that ergonomics was cost-justified in this situation and it improved the facility’s overall ergonomic condition. Dr. Geller’s paper, “Sustaining Participation in a Safety Process: Ten Relevant Principles from Behavioral Science,” expands upon common behavior-based knowledge about the human dynamics of safety, to help produce a more lasting change in safety-related attitudes and behaviors.
