Critique of Article: Health and Safety in the Engineering Classroom
1 The type of research is descriptive, to elicit statistics on how prevalent safety and health instruction is in the normal college engineering curriculum.
2. Yes, the problem is clearly stated. "The Professional Engineer's Code of Ethics includes the responsibility 'to hold paramount the public safety, health and welfare,' and yet several recent reports suggest that few undergraduate engineering programs include any structured course material relevant to identifying environmental threats to health and controlling occupational and public health and safety hazards." (Introduction, p. 1, par. 2, lines 1-4)
3. Yes, the research questions are defined, albeit indirectly through the use of tables and "subsets" of the questions asked. One table lists the reasons why professors do include instruction on health and safety in their classes, while the other addresses the reasons they would not include such instruction. While the questions themselves are not spelled out, the information elicited is clearly ranked on these tables (Tables 1 and 2, pages 2-3, pars. 1-4).
4. No, the problem is not deduced from theory but from results of other studies.(Introduction, p. 1, par. 2, line 3, and p. 6 list).
5. N/A. This is not an experimental or relational design, so no independent variables were defined.
6. One dependent variable, as a source of possible error, was that one-third of the respondents previously had attended a National...
4, par. 1, lines 2-3).These faculty, because of their attendance, may have had a stronger focus on safety issues than had all respondents either attended these workshops or been drawn from non-attendees.
7. Yes, the surveys sent to the respondents covered both negative and positive situations, and gave respondents a range of response from "mildly" to "strongly" positive, to neutral or negative.
8. Yes, the population studied was clearly specified. "A questionnaire probing faculty interest in and instructional commitment to occupational and public health and safety was mailed to 324 undergraduate engineering professors in 112 U.S. colleges of engineering." (Methods, p. 1-2, par. 4) 175 surveys were returned, of which 18 were excluded because the professors had either retired or left the university setting. Of the 157 that remained, 97% of faculty responding were from undergraduate programs accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, representing 65 colleges of engineering (Methods, p. 2, par. 1, lines 13-16).
9. Yes, the sampling methods were clearly outlined. The samples were divided into three groups; one group had attended National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health workshops; one group was chosen from the same universities and fields as those previous, only from non-attendees; and the third group was random (Methods, page 2, par. 1, lines 1-5).
10. This…
