Developing an industry-oriented safety curriculum using the Delphi technique

Abstract

In this study, we examined the development of industry-oriented safety degree curricula at a college level. Based on a review of literature on the practices and study of the development of safety curricula, we classified occupational safety and health curricula into the following three domains: safety engineering, health engineering, and safety and health management. We invited 44 safety professionals to complete a four-round survey that was designed using a modified Delphi technique. We used Chi-square statistics to test the panel experts’ consensus on the significance of the items in the three domains and employed descriptive statistics to rank the participants’ rating of each item. The results showed that the top three items for each of the three domains were Risk Assessment, Dangerous Machinery and Equipment, and Fire and Explosion Prevention for safety engineering; Ergonomics, Industrial Toxicology, and Health Risk Assessment for health engineering; and Industrial Safety and Health Regulations, Accident Investigation and Analysis, and Emergency Response for safety and health management. Only graduates from safety programmes who possess practical industry-oriented abilities can satisfy industry demands and provide value to the existence of college safety programmes.

Keywords:

• safety curriculum
• safety professionals
• safety educators

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the subsidy provided by the National Science Council of the Executive Yuan (Grant No. NSC100-2511-S-018-032-MY2). We are also grateful to the members of the Delphi panel for their participation in this study. Additionally, we thank Mr Chia-Wei Wang who assisted in the data collection and coding processes. Finally, the authors are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the subsidy provided by the National Science Council of the Executive Yuan [grant number NSC100-2511-S-018-032-MY2].