Andrew Hale's Publications
Individual Behaviour in the Face of Danger:
Andrew Hale & Ian Glendon
This book, originally published in 1987, is a classic in the field of human factors and safety. The models developed and described here, of how human behaviour affects safety and how it can be influenced, have been enormously influential in shaping the way we think about human error and the role of people in accidents and accident prevention.
The book was based on a comprehensive review of all the available research up to the mid 1980s. Part 1 puts this information into an easily understood framework of how errors and wrong decisions are made. It distinguishes problems with hazard perception, understanding of danger, issues of responsibility for taking action to control danger and taking safe actions. Part 2 groups knowledge around principles of prevention, with chapters on learning and training, motivation and incentives, selection and accident proneness, and safety by design. The bibliography is very extensive and provides a way into the classic literature on the subject.
The book is now out of print, but it can be downloaded from our site free of charge.
Individual Behaviour in the Control of Danger
Andrew R. Hale
A. Ian Glendon
Industrial Safety Series - Volume 2 (1987)
ISBN 0-444-42838-0 (Vol.2)
ISBN 0-444-42749-X (Series)
© A.R. Hale & A.I. Glendon
The Guide to Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Work Injuries
Lynda S. Robson, Harry S. Shannon, Linda M. Goldenhar, Andrew R. Hale
Are your safety measures really working? How do you know that? What proof is there that things will improve?
These are all questions that should concern every safety and health professional, whether working as an adviser for companies, or as a researcher.
Want to know more? Download this book free here.
If we compare the proof we have of the effectiveness of our safety and health interventions with what is standard practice in medicine for drug and surgical interventions, we must admit that we are lagging far behind in evidence-based prevention.
NIOSH, the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, commissioned a guidance document to start to fill this gap and to answer these questions. It was written by distinguished scientists from the USA and Canada, with a contribution from HASTAM director Andrew Hale. His participation reflected his concern that so few evaluation studies were done to assess how effective safety interventions are, and that the quality of the studies which were done (and were offered for publication in Safety Science, which he edits) was often poor.
The book sets out the way in which evaluation studies should be planned and executed, so as to maximise their quality and add to our store of knowledge for the profession. The more sophisticated study designs may be beyond the resources and possibilities of the average practitioner, but the simpler ones also included can be carried out by anybody having access to data on performance indicators in an organisation.
If you cannot do such studies yourself, the book provides you with the sort of questions you should ask of consultants trying to sell you a prevention package, in order to test whether it is ‘proven technology’.
