Is Training Contractors in Safety Issues Effective in Minimizing Occupational Accident Rates? A Retrospective Cohort Study

Background: Safety of contractors is one of the key safety challenges at construction. Safety training, as an essential prerequisite for achieving safety qualification certificates by contractors, could decrease accident rates in the construction. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of training construction contractors in safety issues in minimizing occupational accidents in a five-year period from 2015 to 2019. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study conducted in 2020, recruiting construction contractors. Thirty four contractors had the required safety qualification certificates (qualified), and 28 contractors did not have safety certificates (non-qualified). The analyzed data consisted of demographic information about construction contractors, documents of safety training, contractors’ safety qualification certificates, and data on reported occupational accidents. The desirability of safety training was assessed based on a Likert scale questionnaire. IBM SPSS software version 22 was used to analyze the data. Results: The findings showed that the frequency of occupational accidents was significantly different between qualified and non-qualified contractors (p˂0.05). Occupational accidents decreased significantly in the qualified contractors after receiving safety training (p˂0.05). The duration of training and the training technique had the highest and lowest desirability, with 80.4% and 25.3%, respectively. Conclusions: Although the findings indicated that safety training could have a significant positive effect on minimizing occupational accidents, improving the quantity and quality of safety training parameters, such as the use of up-to-date and applied techniques as well as various media could increase training efficiency.