Dr. Camille Peres of Texas A&M quantified the impact of (1) non-native English speakers and (2) design of warning symbols on procedure compliance. A virtual environment was used to test the procedures in what would be potentially hazardous situations in the real world. The symbol design had no impact on performance, regardless of the user’s native language. Non-native English speakers did not complete all the steps in the procedures for the tasks with limited time available, despite having proficiency in English.
The proposed study will investigate how different styles of hazard symbols affect procedural compliance when used to convey health, environmental, and safety (HES) information within written procedures. The team will investigate compliance and comprehension of hazard information and overall procedure performance for three variations of hazard symbols across four types of hazards. The study will also investigate the effect of differing culture and English language proficiency on procedure compliance and performance. Results will inform procedure development so operators globally can quickly identify, process, and comply with informational statements and perform procedures safely.
- Is ‘symbol with text’ better than ‘text only’ format?
- If symbols with text are better, which symbols are preferred?
- What is the best text placement format?
- Is level of risk/importance between signal words (DANGER, CAUTION, and, WARNING) clearly understood? Are all of them useful?
- Is the use of color to recognize differences between symbols helpful? Are symbol colors correctly associated with their intended message? For example, red for DANGER, orange for WARNING, yellow for CAUTION, etc.
- In a procedure template, how should the procedure type (or criticality) be highlighted without taking the attention of the operator away from important information such as safety symbols?
- What is the best format for information in an HES or informational statement and what should be included. Is it better to separate the hazard identification, consequence statement and action statement such as in an equipment label? Should MSDS information be included and/or referenced?
A brief literature review was conducted by Chevron Energy Technology Company. The review addressed the effects of safety symbols with text and text only format, Standard (ANSI and ISO) and non-standard safety symbols, text placement, choice of colors and signal words in safety symbols, cultural differences and literacy issues on comprehension, compliance and hazard recognition. The effort revealed that there was no clear consensus regarding HES and informational statement representation within procedures. Additionally, there are human performance concerns regarding distracting template formats. For example, a wide red header banner at the top of a document could dominate the page and result in diverting the user’s attention away from a red DANGER symbol (and related statement) located immediately below the header. In this case, the purpose of highlighting the safety statement may be lost.
Monthly status updates will be given to the assigned COP project manager. At least one researcher on the team will attend two COP meetings every year during the projects duration to present on the current status of the project and any preliminary findings.
The team will present our findings directly to the Center of Operator Performance by means of a formal written final report (pursuant to final report structure outlined in the request for proposal) and an oral presentation of that report. The final report will include recommendations for HES and informational statements within the context of their use in procedures.
Subsequent to presenting the final report to COP, results from this study will be presented at a national human factors conference and published in a relevant peer-reviewed journal.