Increasing completion of accident reports

Complete accident reports are important for diagnosing and ameliorating safety problems and for evaluating the effectiveness of intervention programs. Often, however, these reports are found to lack vital information. Baseline data at a paper mill revealed that accident reports generally failed to supply all requested information. In an effort to improve the situation, instructions and feedback notes were sent to personnel soon after they submitted their reports. These commented on the number of items completed, improvements over previous submissions, and other meritorious features. To evaluate the impact of the intervention, the feedback was withdrawn after 7 weeks and then reinstated. Following termination of feedback, completeness of reports continued to be monitored for about a year. It was found that reporting performance improved under feedback and deteriorated when it was withdrawn. These findings suggest that a simple feedback note can effectively contribute toward solving the problem of incomplete accident reports.