Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Training: A Meta Analysis on the Learner’s Characteristics for Young and Aging Malaysian Workforce

Abstract

Tremendous development in Malaysian industries shows an alarming number of occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Statistics from Malaysian labor shows many ages of the group are active in the total workforce. However, young (18–23 old) and aging workforce (50–60 old) found to be the highest numbers of occupational injuries. The OSH Act 1994 enacted to protect workers, and it is stipulated that safety and health training is uncompromised. Safety and health training is designed as " one, " and hence the gap of learning performance and cog-nitive abilities is unfolding for both of the groups in the safety and health training design. This paper sought to determine the relative effectiveness of different achievements in learning applied to a different method of occupational safety and health (OSH) training between aging and young workforce. Methods of this study employed a meta-analytical analysis on 50 quasi-experimental and experimental studies. Two groups of workers which are young and aging workforce participating in safety training were the main criteria of search in meta-analysis for the purpose of finding were illustrated on the basis of learner's participation in the training process. Studies investigated show that as the training could provide better safety and health knowledge acquisition and decline numbers on injuries, illnesses, and accidents reported. However, the effectiveness of training may differ, especially for both major groups which are young and aging workforce. In a nutshell, OSH training involves in behavioral modeling, and the present findings on young workforce move toward passive computer-based learning and is influenced by psychological and attitude toward learning while the aging workers move toward traditional types of training and ineffectiveness of safety training were only due to their physiological capabilities.