Safety underreporting during naval operations: Prevalence, associated risk, and several contributing factors

What is the extent of safety incident underreporting in US naval ops?

This analysed >11k samples from active-duty servicemembers.

Extracts:

· Prior data suggests that underreporting is prevalent, where “as many as 60 % to 80 % of injuries go unreported”

· This study found “nearly 30 % of active duty servicemembers failed to report a safety issue to their supervisor”

· “For every additional safety event reported, there was a 65 % increase in the likelihood of failing to report safety issues”

· Significant predictors of underreporting were paygrade, affective commitment, individual non-compliance, personal responsibility, prior safety issues reported, job demands, training and equipment resources available, communication, safety reporting processes, and unit cohesion, among others

· “larger ships could have as many as 1,500 unreported safety issues at any timepoint”

· “Additional evidence supported the real- world impact of this problem by linking safety underreporting to the likelihood of a ship experiencing real-world safety accidents. A ship would be nearly 7 times as likely to experience a safety issue, such as fire or electrical shock, for every unreported safety issue per sailor”

· “Overall, individual factors emerged as the most robust predictors as two of the three most influential predictors came from the individual-related category. Crew-related factors likewise had a strong influence, whereas occupational-related and reporting-related factors had minor influence on safety underreporting”

· “the most robust individual predictive factor in safety underreporting was having previously reported safety issues to a supervisor”, which could be explained by several reasons, like “reporting fatigue”, where “individuals become tired with reporting everything that may go wrong”

· “Other significant predictors included crew-related variables such as unit cohesion among the workcenter and the safety climate created by the supervisor, thereby implicating individual perceptions and crew dynamics as the most consistent predictors of unreported behaviors in high-risk environments”

· Several limitations were present, like sailors estimating how many incidents they didn’t report over several years and more – and the connection to real-world events (fires etc being >7 times the risk) require a lot of caution

Ref: Biggs, A. T., & Russell, D. W. (2024). Safety underreporting during naval operations: Prevalence, associated risk, and several contributing factors. Safety Science, 180, 106645.