A study of associations of occupational accidents to number of employees, and to hours worked

This article is the result of a 4 hours class, in a MSc course, aiming to the group production of a paper. The object of study was the variation of occupational accidents with number of employees, hours worked and average duration of workday. Scientific goal was searching correlations between variables. Learning objective was demonstrating steps of scientific method, and the educational objective was breaking down prejudices about the research process. Starting from a brief literature review, research hypotheses were formulated. Subsequently, statistical methods were applied to a data set of occupational accidents with sick leave, average number of employees, hours worked per year, and average duration of the workday, of a large company, during two decades. Results showed statistically significant and strong direct associations of accidents to hours worked, as well as to number of employees. As to the association of accidents to average duration of workday, it appeared to be statistically significant, but of weak intensity. This essay also enabled to interpolate and extrapolate, with proper caution, accidents expected in a given workload. The skills developed become useful to research, as well as to manage labour risk prevention.