Validation of the SBT (Safety Behaviour Test): the impact of individual characteristics on SBT use and performance

Given the proportionately high number of work related accidents that occur in New Zealand each year, hiring employees that demonstrate safety behaviour is of the utmost importance to organisations. Despite the importance of having safely behaving employees, methods of assessing safety behaviour are currently limited to self report and accident history analysis, which are associated with self report bias. To address the demand for an alternative method, the Safety Behaviour Test (SBT) was developed. The SBT is a gamified assessment, in which users interact with a game environment that tests their safety behaviour based on a number of decision points. The aim of the current investigation was to determine whether the individual characteristics of a person have an identifiable impact on SBT use and performance, thus it was an investigation of adverse impact. In order to achieve this aim, 100 participants completed the SBT and a questionnaire regarding their individual characteristics, and the scores of both assessments were correlated. Of all of the individual characteristics measured in the current investigation, only computer game experience was found to potentially have an adverse impact on SBT performance. Altogether, the results from the current investigation and the results of an associated work on the SBT by Crowe (2018), which investigated the criterion- related validity of the SBT, indicate that the SBT authentically measures safety behaviour. The implications of these findings and the advantages of using gamified assessments are discussed