Perception of safety intervention practices in the laboratory among students in higher education sector

¹ Faculty of Earth Science, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Jeli Campus, 17600 Jeli, Kelantan, Malaysia
² Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract

Safety is one of the crucial elements in the educational sector. Safety intervention is one of the elements that must be highlighted to increase workplace safety. In general, safety intervention is the alteration of internal or external aspects that may minimize workplace accidents such as safety procedures, safety committees, safety expertise and others. Hence, this study aims to analyze the safety intervention in the laboratory among higher education students. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 338 students from three Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Jeli Campus faculties including the Science Foundation Program. Most of the respondents are Year 1 students with 31.7%. Most (45.9%) of students spend between four to six hours daily in the laboratory. Furthermore, 49.1% of students, participated in the laboratory three to four times per week. This study divided safety intervention practices into three components: management, technical and human. The results from the descriptive analysis show that management component practices are the highest intervention safety practices adopted by the students when working in the laboratory with an overall mean score of 4.64. Compared with the technical component (overall mean score of 4.61) and human component (overall mean score of 4.53). To prevent laboratory accidents in higher education, the human element in safety intervention practices should also be emphasized. The information obtained from this study could be used by the authorities in charge of occupational health and safety as well as by the stakeholders in higher education to reduce the accident rate in higher education institutions.