Integrating Behavioral Science with Human Factors to Address Process Safety

ABSTRACT

Applying the science of human factors to eliminate error across all aspects of process design, management, operation, and maintenance has been a focus in the process safety area for many years. Human error has been attributed as a major cause of many high profile catastrophic accidents around the world. These accidents have resulted in national and international attention, which has led to a focus on improving organizational capabilities, systems, and in many cases, governmental regulations around human factors. This article provides a review of the field of human factors highlighting various topics in the literature, and introduces governmental regulatory bodies currently engaging organizations in a scientific approach to human factors. Finally, the need for integrating behavioral science methodologies with human factors is addressed. This is done with specific focus on how Organizational Behavior Management methodologies can work in concert with human factors to optimize process safety.     

A method to investigate drivers' acceptance of Blind Spot Detection System®

Lately, with the goal of improving road safety, car makers developed and commercialised some Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which, through the detection of blind spot areas on the vehicle's sides, could help the drivers during the overtaking and the change lane task. Despite the possible benefits to reduce lateral crashes, the overall impact on road safety of such systems have not been deeply studied yet; notably, despite some researches have been carried out, there is a lack of studies regarding the long-term usage and drivers' acceptance of those systems. In order to fill the research gap, a methodology, based on the combination of focus groups interviews, questionnaires and a small-scale field operational test (FOT), has been designed in this study; such a methodology aims at evaluating drivers' acceptance of Blind Spot Information System? and at proposing some ideas to improve the usability and user-friendliness of this (or similar) device in their future development.     

The generalized two-sided power distribution

The generalized standard two-sided power (GTSP) distribution was mentioned only in passing by Kotz and van Dorp Beyond Beta, Other Continuous Families of Distributions with Bounded Support and Applications, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 2004. In this paper, we shall further investigate this three-parameter distribution by presenting some novel properties and use its more general form to contrast the chronology of developments of various authors on the two-parameter TSP distribution since its initial introduction. GTSP distributions allow for J-shaped forms of its pdf, whereas TSP distributions are limited to U-shaped and unimodal forms. Hence, GTSP distributions possess the same three distributional shapes as the classical beta distributions. A novel method and algorithm for the indirect elicitation of the two-power parameters of the GTSP distribution is developed. We present a Project Evaluation Review Technique example that utilizes this algorithm and demonstrates the benefit of separate powers for the two branches of activity GTSP distributions for project completion time uncertainty estimation.     

Qualitative research on homosexual and bisexual behavior relevant to HIV/AIDS

The spread of the international AIDS pandemic has drawn attention to the urgent need for data on human sexual behavior; yet the lack of an established tradition of theory and method in sex research has limited the development of research initiatives in this area. This has been particularly true in the study of homosexual and bisexual behavior, which has relied heavily on the use of quantitative survey methods that largely fail to address cross‐cultural differences in the structure and meaning of same‐sex sexual experience. More qualitative approaches offer the possibility of investigating homosexual and bisexual behavior within a broader social and cultural context and can therefore play an important role in developing a framework for the comparative analysis of behavioral data. This article seeks to contribute to the development of theory and method in sex research by outlining key research issues and possible methodologies for the qualitative investigation of homosexual and bisexual behavior in relation to HIV/AIDS.     

Reduced Risk-Taking After Prior Losses in Pathological Gamblers Under Treatment and Healthy Control Group but not in Problem Gamblers

A group of pathological gamblers and a group of problem gamblers (i.e., gamblers at risk of becoming pathological) were compared to healthy controls on their risk-taking propensity after prior losses. Each participant played both the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking task (BART) and a modified version of the same task, where individuals face five repeated predetermined early losses at the onset of the game. No significant difference in risk-taking was found between groups on the standard BART task, while significant differences emerged when comparing behaviors in the two tasks: both pathological gamblers and controls reduced their risk-taking tendency after prior losses in the modified BART compared to the standard BART, whereas problem gamblers showed no reduction in risk-taking after prior losses. We interpret these results as a sign of a reduced sensitivity to negative feedback in problem gamblers which might contribute to explain their loss-chasing tendency.     

Removing barriers to technology

Health care executives need to take every step possible to overcome barriers to adoption of new technology by physicians. Through just a few relatively simple and inexpensive strategies, they can enable their physicians to use the clinical information system and bring value to their patients, health system and medical staff.     

On influence diagnostic in univariate elliptical linear regression models

We discuss in this paper the assessment of local influence in univariate elliptical linear regression models. This class includes all symmetric continuous distributions, such as normal, Student-t, Pearson VII, exponential power and logistic, among others. We derive the appropriate matrices for assessing the local influence on the parameter estimates and on predictions by considering as influence measures the likelihood displacement and a distance based on the Pearson residual. Two examples with real data are given for illustration.     

Inference on Filtered and Smoothed Probabilities in Markov-Switching Autoregressive Models

ABSTRACT

We derive a statistical theory that provides useful asymptotic approximations to the distributions of the single inferences of filtered and smoothed probabilities, derived from time series characterized by Markov-switching dynamics. We show that the uncertainty in these probabilities diminishes when the states are separated, the variance of the shocks is low, and the time series or the regimes are persistent. As empirical illustrations of our approach, we analyze the U.S. GDP growth rates and the U.S. real interest rates. For both models, we illustrate the usefulness of the confidence intervals when identifying the business cycle phases and the interest rate regimes.