Occupational Risks: Perceptual Map Construction using psychometric paradigm and multivariate methods

Abstract

Risk management focus main on technical and rational analysis about operational risks and by those imposed by occupational environment. In this work one looks to contribute to perception study of work safety professionals about a series of activities and environment agents. In this way it was used theory sustained by psychometric paradigm and multivariate analysis tools, mainly multidimensional scaling, generalized Procrustes analysis and facet theory, in order to construct the perceptual map of occupational risks. The results obtained showed that the essential characteristics of risks, which were initially split in 4 facets were detected and maintained in perceptual map. The construction of perceptual map also permitted to verify the formation of a new facet, not considered in the beginning. The facet theory which by hypothesis was used in this work showed adequate, providing the regional interpretation of the map. The inferential analysis realized showed fine results for the final configuration validation, indicating which risks and/or activities belongs to the same facet.