Effectiveness of Safety Education Based on the Basic Three Rules for Safety among Supervisors in the Shipbuilding Industry

Abstract

This study analyzed changes in self-reported safety awareness and safety behavioral intentions among supervisors in the shipbuilding industry, a high-risk industry, following safety education based on the Basic Three Rules for Safety(BTS), presented in the safety essay Anjeontong(Lee, 2024). A one-group pretest-posttest design was applied to 115 supervisors at H Heavy Industries using the same 15-item BTS questionnaire before and after the safety education. The instrument comprised three domains: housekeeping and visibility, control of unnecessary movement, and visual and auditory attention. The full scale demonstrated high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s =.911 at pretest and =.955 at posttest. An exploratory factor analysis of the pretest data showed a KMO value of .886 and a significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity( 2=876, p<.001); the theoretically specified three-factor solution accounted for 52.8% of the cumulative variance. The overall mean score increased by 0.45 points, from 3.81 at pretest to 4.26 at posttest. Scores for Principles 1, 2, and 3 increased by 0.46, 0.39, and 0.50 points, respectively, and all changes were statistically significant ( (114)=7.67∼9.10, all p<.001, Cohen’s d=0.71∼0.85). The overall BTS was also significant(t(114)=9.48, p<.001, Cohen’s d=0.88). In the multiple regression analysis, only age was significantly and negatively associated with pretest-posttest change, while the model showed limited explanatory power(R2=.089, adjusted R2=.056). These findings support the potential use of BTS as a practical framework for field-applicable safety education for supervisors in shipbuilding workplaces.