EMPLOYEE ACCIDENTS - INFLUENCES OF PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS, JOB CHARACTERISTICS, AND SUBSTANCE USE IN JOBS DIFFERING IN ACCIDENT POTENTIAL

Relationships between employee substance use and accidents (i.e., injury and noninjury accidents) at work were assessed in a sample of municipal employees in a large southwestern city in the United States. Employees were classified into low- and high-risk job samples and discriminant function analyses were computed within job samples to classify employees into ''no accident'' and ''some accident'' classifications. Variables from personal, job, and substance-use domains were used as discriminators. Results indicated that employees likely to have accidents tended to have dysfunctional personal backgrounds and reported that they were dissatisfied and tense at work. Drug and alcohol use were major discriminators of accident groups for the high-risk job sample but not for the low-risk job sample.