University of New South Wales - School of Risk and Safety Sciences

Aspects of human behaviour are essential inclusions in a comprehensive study of safety. Behavioural research is typically based on the discipline of Psychology, which is the scientific study of human behaviour and thought, but can also include approaches from sociology and related fields.

Psychology is an extremely wide discipline. Accordingly, behavioural approaches can be applied to many areas of safety and risk management. They are most appropriate when some aspect of human behaviour and/or thought are of primary interest, or are hypothesised to be significant to a particular problem.

In safety and risk management, behavioural approaches might be used when investigating:

How people perceive risk and make decisions Safety culture/climate and attitudinal/perceptual issues
Motivation, training, performance measurement and social processes at work
Individual differences (e.g., personality)
The effects, prevalence, management and perceptions of psychological hazards within OHS (e.g., stress, fatigue, violence, bullying, harassment)
Aspects of management and organisational psychology
Behavioural strategies for improving safety at work (e.g., “Behaviour Based Safety” and incentive/reward schemes)
Marketing the need for optimising safety systems
Management of change
and any other situations where human behaviour is of interest.

Research methods from Psychology are quite useful in many of the above situations, because they tend to emphasise rigorous methodology, logical planning and research design, and sophisticated statistical analyses.

For information on the kinds of behavioural research conducted in the School, please see Dr. Carlo Caponecchia’s page.