Promoting OSHA at Higher Institutions: Assessment of Level of Safety Awareness among Laboratory Users

Occupational, safety and health administration is a major important function in human resource management. Malaysia encounters serious problems regarding the safety and health of workers arising from negligence in the workplace, which at times results in accidents and death. Latest statistics from PERKESO shows that more than 1526 cases have been reported across the country from January 2014 – June 2014. Managing occupational safety and health is very important and should be given priority by every organisation and factory in order to avoid the loss of skilled labor. The level of employee security awareness needs to be nurtured through learning processes and teaching methods at the university level. This study aims to determine and evaluate the level of safety awareness among laboratory science students in order to promote safety and health administration awareness among undergraduates. A survey was done with 240 students using questionnaires and the data was analysed using statistical analysis methods. The results showed that the level of awareness among laboratory science students is at an awareness stage. The average mean value is mainly 3.0 to 4.0. However, the level of safety awareness among laboratory science students were very low particularly when conducting experiment at night, where the average mean value was within the range of 2.0 – 3.0. The Exploratory Factor Analysis showed that the KMO result was 0.805 which means meritorious. Additionally, the Bartlett’s Test sphericity showed that correlations exist among the items. However, the study has its own limitations in terms of sampling which was restricted to pure science students. Future research should include other fields of studies such as engineering and ICT. These findings provide valuable feedback to help the university in promoting positive safety awareness at an early stage in the laboratory environment. Future studies can be expanded to measure the effectiveness of safety awareness campaign which include pre and post results.