Effect of hazardous material symbols labeling and training on comprehension according to three types of educational specialization

International journal of industrial ergonomics 31 (2003) 343-355

An-Hsiang Wang, Chun-Cheng Chi

Report: Yang Kun, Ou

Purpose

• The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of hazardous material symbol labeling and training on the comprehension of three groups of participants having differing educational specialization.

• A purpose of this research is to learn whether Taiwan’s hazard symbol labels met the criteria of ANSI and ISO standards.

Reference

• The use of context may help reduce the costs of producing pictorial symbols with acceptable, above-criterion comprehension levels( Wolff and Wogalter, 1998)

• Jaynes and Boles (1990) results found that symbols with context yielded better performance in reading, and complying

Reference

• Cairney and Sless (1982) found that groups (migrants, native-born and Vietnamese) differ in their recognition and recall test performance on symbolic safety

• If university graduate students do not understand hazard symbols, less educated individuals are apt to encounter even greater difficulty in understanding them.

Reference

• Wogalter et al. (1997) have found that training leads to a significant increase in pictorial comprehension

Method

• Subjects– 60 university graduates– They were between 22 and 26 years old– 60人有工程、設計和商學背景各 20人– 20(10 male, 10 female)– The subjects were determined to have 0.8 correcte

d visual acuity or better, and normal color vision.

Apparatus

• Topcon Screenscope SS-3

• Standard Pseudo-Isochromatic charts

• Twelve hazard symbols were printed on individual 10x10 cm sheets of white paper.

Experiment design

• The factor of training was studied on three levels in the experiment: – comprehension prior to training– comprehension immediately following training– comprehension one month following training

• Education was between-subjects variables

• Training and symbolic pictorial were within-subjects variables

Procedure

• The first stage of experiment began with an open-ended pre-training test, in which subjects were asked to write down the meaning of each symbol on an A4-sided paper.

• Subjects were provided with no time limit within which to write their responses

Procedure

• The experimenter told the subjects the meaning of the hazard symbols through the use of a hazard symbol label booklet

• Thirty seconds was spent in describing the meaning of each hazard symbol

• Upon completion of this step, recognition training was conducted

Procedure

• Subjects saw the meaning of randomly selected hazard symbols on A4 paper and were asked to pick the corresponding symbol from the booklet of hazard symbols

• If subjects selected the wrong hazard symbol, the experimenter told the subjects the correct meaning of the hazard symbol again.

Procedure

• The recognition training procedure

• Recall training required subjects to orally recall the correct meaning of hazard symbols that were randomly selected by the experimenter from the booklet of hazard symbol labels

Procedure

• After the training session, the subjects were given a 10-min break after which they were asked to engage in a set of unrehearsed tasks (playing poker) that served as a distraction to prevent stimuli from being retained in short-term memory (Wogalter et al., 1997)

Procedure

• In the second stage of the experiment, subjects taking the immediate post-training test were shown the hazard symbols (in a new random order) and were asked to write down their meaning.

• The third stage of experiment was held one month following the immediate post-training test.

Data analysis

• ISO 9186(2001)計算方式– estimated probability of correct understanding over

80%) were assigned as a score of ‘‘1’’– estimated probability of correct understanding bet

ween 66% and 80%) were assigned as ‘‘0.75’’– Estimated probability of correct understanding bet

ween 50% and 65%) were assigned as ‘‘0.5’’– The meaning which is understood is opposite to th

e intended was assigned as a score of ‘‘1’’

Results

• The hazard symbol had a significant effect on comprehension F(11,627)=32.54, P<0.01

• The education specialization produced a significant main effect on symbol comprehension F(2, 57)=8.51, P<0.01

• The training had a significant effect on comprehension F(2,114)=248.7, P<0.01

Results

Reults

Results

Results

Discussion

• We found that the hazard symbol labels for explosives materials and poisonous materials group I and II were familiar pictorials, and be considered to be well-designed pictorials as they exceeded the ISO 67% comprehension standard.

•

Discussion

• Subjects had good comprehension immediately following training and had the least comprehension dropping one month after training

• There is significant comprehension difference among the three groups of subjects

• The industrial specialization showed the significantly better comprehension than the subjects of business and design.

Discussion

• The well-design hazard symbols which were the best understood initially, also resulted in the least comprehension dropping in the one month post-training test

• Consequently, redesigning the poor-designed symbols to be maximally understandable is still very important despite the high cost of redesigning.