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

. 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.


Introduction
This safety element always emphasizes the causes of accidents as well as safety intervention to reduce accidents in the workplace.Generally, an accident was defined as an unwelcome and unexpected event or object that could have been avoided if the cause of the accident had been identified and addressed prior to its occurrence [1].Besides that, an accident was also defined as an unanticipated and uncontrollable occurrence resulting in personal injury or the possibility of it resulting from the action or reaction of a substance, person, object, or radiation [2].Meanwhile, safety inventions are defined as interventions that require changes in external conditions to encourage safe behaviour over risky activity [3].The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Department also defined safety intervention as improving safety aspects in the workplace by implementing new policies, procedures or any initiative to enhance safety against workers and the workplace [4].
Any workplace accident in Malaysia is handled by the Department of Occupational Safety and Health Department (DOSH) under the Ministry of Human Resources.DOSH covers ten sectors including education which falls under Public Service and Statutory Authorities Utilities.Table 1, shows the statistical data of accidents that were reported and investigated by DOSH from the year 2018 until the year 2022.However, the statistical data show negligible accidents compared with other sectors such as manufacturing, construction, and transport, yet continues to raising public concern about the incidents and consequences.In addition, Table 2 shows explicitly the accident cases that occurred in education from the year 2018 until the year 2022 that were published in national newspapers.It was discovered that there were only eight accident cases in the education sector over the five years.Although the number of accident cases in the higher education sector is only one case over five years, is a wake-up call for those involved in the higher education sector to take this matter seriously.In the education sector, students or researchers who conducted research in laboratories were exposed to a variety of hazards such as musculoskeletal and chemical, biological, physical, and radioactive hazards [5] either directly or indirectly.Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the safety intervention practices in the laboratory among higher education students particularly students from UMK Jeli Campus.

Methodology
This study used a quantitative approach to determine safety intervention practices among UMK students.The study sampling was conducted from September to November 2022 and was distributed using Google Forms.About 338 students from the Faculty of Earth Science, Faculty of Agro-Based Industry, Faculty of Bioengineering and Technology and UMK Science Foundation Program participated in this study.The survey questionnaire was divided into four sections.Section A focuses on socio-demographic information while Section B focuses on the management component of safety intervention practices, Section C focuses on the human component of safety intervention practices and Section D focuses on the technical component of safety intervention practices in the laboratory.
The safety intervention practices components were adapted from [14] and [15].There were three major components in safety intervention: management, human and technical.In the management component, three safety intervention practices aspects are involved: communication and feedback, daily safety records, delivery safety communication mechanism.At the same time, the human component contains safety knowledge program, safety training, safety information.Lastly, the technical component contains the Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) program, control of the movement and use of hazardous substances and chemical, emergency responses preparedness.
Besides that, Section B until Section D used the Likert scale which contain 1 = never; 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes; 4 = always; 5 = very always.The data collection was analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS).The reliability results for the 67 questions used in this study are shown in Table 3.

Results and Discussion
The socio-demographic information revealed that most respondents are female students with 52.1% while 47.9% are male students.The age range of the respondents is majority between 21 years old to 30 years old.The 31.7% of Year 1 students participated as respondents for this study.The majority (45.9%) of students spend about 4 to 6 hours daily in the laboratory.
According to the findings, 49.1% of students, are involved and working in the laboratory three to four times per week as presented in Table 4. Overall, respondents answered between "always" and "very always" for all items in the management aspect with slightly different mean scores (4.57 to 4.68).This emphasizes that the effective communication is important to avoid mishaps in the laboratory [16].

Conclusion
This study shows how the management component highly been practiced in the safety intervention among students in the higher education sector compared with the technical and human components.The overall mean score as followed: management component (4.64) > technical component (4.61) > human component (4.53).Results shows, lack of practice in safety training aspect in the human component.In order to increase safety intervention at workplace specifically in the laboratory at higher education, these three components should be balanced and will reduce workplace accidents in the future.The findings from this study are crucial for the authorities in charge of occupational health and safety including stakeholders in higher education to reduce the accident rate in higher education institutions.

Table 1 .
The statistical data of accidents reported in the public services and statutory authorities utility sector.

Table 2 .
List of accident cases from the year 2018 to the year 2022.

Table 3 .
The reliability results for questions used in this study.

Table 4 .
The socio-demographic information

Table 5
reveals the findings of the management component.There are three aspects in the management component which are communication and feedback, daily safety report, and delivery safety communication mechanism.This study indicated that the communication & feedback aspect and delivery safety communication mechanism aspect are the higher aspects of safety intervention practices among respondents with an overall mean score of 4.66.

Table 5 .
The mean score of the management component in safety intervention practices.There are three aspects of human component in safety intervention practices which are safety knowledge program, safety training, and safety information.The results show the safety information aspect has the highest overall mean score with 4.63 in safety intervention practices among respondents in the human component, followed by the safety knowledge aspect (4.55) and safety training (4.14) as shown in Table6.Overall, respondents answered between "always" and "very always" for all items in the safety knowledge program aspect and safety information aspect with slightly different mean scores (4.51 to 4.64).Unfortunately, for the safety training aspect, respondents preferred to answer "always" for this aspect, which revealed that the respondents lacked safety training in order to prevent laboratory accidents.Safety training and safety knowledge programs are vital in strengthening safety intervention practices in the laboratory[17][18].

Table 6 .
[19]mean score of the human component in safety intervention practices.There are four aspects involved in the technical component which are the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) program, control of the movement and use of dangerous substances and chemicals, emergency response readiness, and safe work practices.According to Table7findings regarding the technical components in safety intervention practices among the respondents revealed the aspect of control of the movement and use of dangerous substances and chemicals had greatest overall mean score with 4.62 followed by the aspects of the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) program and safe work practices with 4.61.The aspects of the emergency response readiness aspect has the lowest average mean score with 4.60.Overall, respondents answered between "always" and "very always" for all items in the technical aspect with slightly different mean score (4.57 to 4.64).Protective Equipment (PPE) is safety equipment gear that is compulsory to wear when conducting experiments in the laboratory.It is essential to know and understand how to use PPE in the proper way[19].

Table 7 .
The mean score of technical component in safety intervention practices.