1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Accidents, mishaps, delays or warfare happen to everyone. They

are normal things that can cause inhibitors to become a student’s
enemy or boss. It could be a physical injury or a mental disorder that
delays or injures the person or their work. It happens in most cases
where it involves both of either the accident or injury and the warfare
inside an ICT institution, facility or building.

ICT is a strand offered in Senior High that deals with computers

such as fixing them, using them as means to draw a house, to build a
program or to create an animation and others.

Here in Don Pablo, they offer various specializations in the ICT

strand varying from drafting to programming. They work in order to
hone students’ capabilities to the fullest by means of teaching it to
them manually and by immersing their students inside a workplace so
that their knowledge and skills that they’ve gained overtime while
studying will be put into the test and put into good use. But, there are
inevitable things that arise out of nowhere; one is the violation of the
students’ safety.
 2

Safety is an essential thing, an important aspect or element of

each human being that must be protected especially for ICT students
because they will be handling physical objects such as computers,
monitors and wirings. It can also be a mental warfare when facing
deterrents in the workplace such as complaints and such. It needs to
become a priority that has to be enrooted in their minds and also
acknowledge the fact that what’s at stake is their life or worse,
someone else’s life, if ever they’re not careful about handling things or
issues or carefully perceiving their surroundings. In this case, safety
has only one enemy that people or in this case, these ICT students
need to look out for, that is hazards.

Hazards are enemies of safety, itself, because they can become

delays in a progress or a factor of inhibition in a person’s life. They
should be aware if possible, avoid it. Unawareness may become the
equation towards the violation of their safety. The best way possible
to avoid hazards is to start practicing how to avoid them.

Practices are rules to be followed, a policy to abide in order to

avoid or prevent mishaps in happening. There are various methods to
become proficient in something and one of them is by practicing. The
practices of safety hazard makes people wise and careful about things
that shouldn’t be interacted at all or makes people aware about what
to avoid and what to do in emergency situations.

As predicated on the manual entitled, School Emergency

Management Planning: Hazard Vulnerability Assessment, school
hazards include those dangers that occur within the school building or
grounds. Some examples of school hazards include bullying, fires,
 3

hazardous materials spills, and violence. Safety experts suggest that

risk assessment teams utilize site surveys to identify school hazards.

School hazards are inevitable, it is only known for a fact that

people should do all kinds of means to avoid them. It may bring
causalities to the students of a particular institution therefore the
school must assess about how informed and aware their students are
when it comes to objects of orientation that are out of their academic
league such as in the ICT strand where CPR or handling emergency
situations are not taught at all.

Speaking of which, this is why safety hazard practices are a

thriving learning area where these practices have to be familiarized or
if possible mastered by these ICT students because being wise and
aware of your own health or another individual’s health can really help
the person’s life, the school’s reputation and other matters. There are
various practices that they have to master so that they can avoid
getting injuries or getting sick meaning their work progress won’t get
hindered or winded down at all.

According to a manual entitled, Emergency Management

Planning Hazard Vulnerability Assessment, the field of risk
assessment has emerged along with development of a wide variety of
tools. Numerous tools are now available to support the various phases
of the risk management process as well as uncertainty about the
nature of adverse consequences; risks can also involve uncertainty
about the timing or magnitude of the outcome.
 4

Schools or institutions must implement various tools in assessing

the students’ knowledge regarding to the awareness of the students in
safety hazards such as knowing how to deal with injuries, giving first-
aid procedures and following the safety standard guidelines. The
schools can also give seminars, workshops or any mediums that can
help how the student faces these kinds of issues especially when it
comes to their health.

Based on the review entitled Occupational Safety and Health

among Young Workers in the Nordic Countries by Therese N.
Hanvold. Et al. (2018), studies have shown that young workers have a
higher nonfatal accident rate than older workers that most accident
among young workers occur in retail industry, that handling heavy
loads is a risk factor for occupational accidents and that heavy vehicle
driver, younger than 27 years have a higher risk of accident
involvement than their older colleagues.

Since the respondents are still young people aspiring to become

best ICT employees in the future, they are deemed more prone into
accidents or hazards since they’re still young, they still have a lot to
learn and experience as compared to adults who might’ve gone
through phases which made them more aware of accidents and
others. It is advisable to ask for advices or seek help on the people
who have a higher level of experience because they can give out
intervention plans or designs or implementation plan that can make
the student’s level of risk to accident, hazards or injuries decrease.

In addition, young workers have a higher risk of reporting low job

control, heavy physical work and high chemical work exposures than
 5

older workers. It is mainly focused on age characteristics alone,

without taking into account that young workers constitute a
heterogeneous group with different level of exposure, experience and
attachment into working life. To secure a sustainable working life and
reduce the burden of occupational accidents and illnesses for young
workers, there is a need to not only determines the occupational
safety and health (OSHP) risks but also to identify the vulnerable
groups within the young force. (Hanvold, et al. 2018)

Assessment regarding safety hazards must not only apply in

primarily knowing the knowledge of the person involved or the
practices that they follow because there are other factors that might
contribute to the accident or hazard in happening such as children,
women, minorities or other that might be the cause of the injury or the
one who will be receiving the injury.

They must be aware in their surroundings and not only focus on

practices that they follow in a limited stance such as handling tools,
using personal protective equipment (PPE) and others thus reducing
the risk of occupational accidents and illnesses among young workers
and their environment alike.
The problem regarding safety hazard can be present in many
conditions. First, if the ICT student is situated in their specialization
training workplace. If the student isn’t careful about how the tools are
properly used, not using personal protective equipment and/or taking
one’s safety for granted, hazards are vulnerable and ready to attack
the person’s safety. Second, in their immersion workplace, this time,
since the ICT student is with an immersion teacher in which there are
other people who are also situated, one must be very careful
especially in handling equipment because it might go out of place and
 6

injuries can happen or worse, death. It doesn’t only apply to the

physical injuries or casualties but also to the mental warfare that the
ICT student is battling that might cause an injury to happen. Third, if
the ICT student grows up to be a technician yet he/she does not
strictly follow the rules or ethics of the practices, he/she might hurt
himself/herself as well as the people who are around him/her.

This study can be applied as a guide or reference since the

study can be applied to any strand of any school that has an
immersion activity. For this research, it will be delimited to only ICT
Senior High School Students of DPLMHS-SHS. In Don Pablo, the
issue can interchange between being active or not, it depends on how
well aware the ICT student is, in his/her surroundings, how much
knowledge he/she has and how much he/she has practiced about
safety hazards regulations, policies or practices prior to their
workplace or during their specialization period or class. Accidents,
mishaps and the like would be avoided if they can absorb and apply
safety hazard practices as part of their learning capabilities and put
into action when needed.

The researchers will be using a survey method in gathering the

data needed for the research wherein it will be conducted under the
convenience of the respondents along with seeking permission to the
school principal and adviser of the ICT students.
 7

Theoretical Framework

The research paper is anchored on the following theories where

it will base the overall concept, process and flow of the research,
these are: system safety theory, pure chance theory, accident
proneness theory and multiple causation theory.

System Safety Theory

The study is anchored on the System Safety Theory wherein
according to Wikipedia, it calls for a risk management strategy based
on identification, analysis of hazards and application of remedial
controls using a system-based approach. This is different from
traditional safety strategies which rely on control of conditions and
causes of an accident based on either the epidemiological analysis or
as a result of investigation of past accidents. “HAZOP” or also known
as Hazard and Operability are one of the several techniques to be
used in identification of hazards.

This study is anchored in this theory which seeks to identify

which risks pose much more of a threat to the student’s safety and
apply remedies to eliminate that threat. The theory is a significant way
because the researchers can employ ‘HAZOP’ as an investigation
technique in identifying the hazard and contribute a solution in
removing the hazard. The theory can help the study be much more
reliable since it also focuses on the factors that contribute to what had
caused the injury or fatality.
 8

Pure Chance Theory

There has been no clear fact as to who stated the pure chance
theory. According to this theory, every one of any given set of workers
has an equal chance to be involved in an accident. It further implies
that there is no single discernible pattern of events that lead to the
accident.

Based on the aforementioned theory, the pure chance theory

purely relies on how fate plays like in a coincidental manner or by
‘chance’ in which the injury occurred. There is a huge possibility that
even though how much informed and careful a person is, accidents
are prone to him/her.

Accident Proneness Theory

Based on the definition of the Accident Proneness Theory on the
website named, Disaster Management Institute, Bhopal, it defines it as
a theory that maintains that within a given set of workers, there exists
a subset of workers who are more liable to be involved in accidents.

The study is also anchored in this theory because there are

people who are more prone to accident such as those who elicit lack
of knowledge regarding safety hazard practices thus showing how
much they’re prone to an accident such as not wearing PPE or
Personal Protective Equipment when handling sharp objects or tools
during their assessment or when fixing computers and other related
fields that might cause injuries or accidents.
 9

Multiple Causation Theory

According to an article entitled Accident Causation Theories,

Multiple Causation Theory is an outgrowth of the Domino Theory,
but it postulates that for a single accident there may be many
contributory factors, causes and sub-causes, and that certain
combinations of these give rise to accidents. According to this
theory, the contributory factors can be grouped into the following
two categories:

1. Behavioral. This category includes factors pertaining to

the worker, such as improper attitude, lack of
knowledge, lack of skills, and inadequate physical and
mental condition.
2. Environmental. This category includes improper
guarding of other hazardous work elements and
degradation of equipment through use and unsafe
procedures.

The major contribution of this theory is to bring out the fact that
rarely, if ever, is an accident the result of a single cause or act.

Based on the aforementioned theory, there are various factors

that pertain to causing the injury or hazard in happening in the first
place such as behavioral and environmental. In behavioral, if the ICT
student is lousy in attending to his/her equipment, not aware of how
dangerous the tools are, he/she is showing a lousy behavior that
makes him/her care-free in a way that injuries are more prone to
happen to him/her. In environmental, this could come in many different
forms such as the place itself being an unsafe haven for working or
having faulty equipment.
 10

This theory can greatly have an effect on the student since there
are various factors within one category that can directly sum up the
cause of injury or hazard.
Conceptual Framework

This study is anchored on the conceptual paradigm presented in

Figure 1 that illustrates the flow of the research study and the relationship
of the variables.

Independent Variables Dependent Variable Output

Safety Hazard Practices Safety Hazard

Outcome
 Workplace hazards
Implementation Plan
 Workplace policies and  Workplace
procedures Hazards
 Occupational Health and
Safety Awareness
 Participation in Occupational
Health and Safety
 General Safety Practices

 Gender
 Age
 Specializa
tion
 Section
and
Grade

Moderating Variables

Figure 1

Conceptual Paradigm of the Study

 11

The figure above shows that this study considered the relationship
among the variables considered. The researchers have identified the
Workplace hazards, workplace policies and procedures, occupational
health and safety awareness, participation in occupational health and
safety and general safety practices as Independent Variables and
workplace hazard are dependent variable, the gender, age, specialization
and section & track are the moderating variables.

Statement of the Problem

This research paper aims to evaluate if the ICT Senior High

School Students of Don Pablo Lorenzo Memorial High School –
Senior High School Standalone are following and practicing the safety
hazard policies and practices.

Specifically, it attempts to provide answers to the following

questions:

1.) What is the level of awareness on safety hazard practices

among ICT students in terms of:
1.1) Workplace hazards
1.2) Workplace policies and procedures
1.3.) Occupational health and safety awareness
1.4.) Participation in occupational health and
safety
1.5.) General safety practices
 12

2.) To what extent, do the ICT students believe that safety hazard
outcome is manipulated by the following?
2.1.) Workplace hazards
3.) What is the significant relationship of the safety hazard
practices and the ICT students when grouped according to the
following?
3.1) Gender
3.2) Age
3.3) Specialization
3.4.) Section & Grade

Significance of the Study

The outcome of this study may become the basis in making an

institution, in this case, DPLMHS-SHS more aware and careful in
evaluating and enforcing safety hazard policies as well as practices on
the ICT students of DPLMHS-SHS. The study will be beneficial to the
following:

Specialized Teacher
The study can help them be more cautious in supervising their
students especially in handling equipment, tools and peripherals. They
can train the students or advise them so that they’re already doing
safety hazard practices at still an early age.
 13

ICT Students

The study can make them start practicing safety hazard

practices if they’re not aware, improve their knowledge regarding the
practices and help each other out in terms of emergencies.

School/Institution
The school in charge of handling the ICT students can
implement an updated safety and risk guidelines, give lessons,
seminars or workshops in order to make these students be aware and
train them regarding it thus making them a cautious and
compassionate individual.

Future Researchers

Future researchers will benefit a lot from this study since they
can use it as a guide in following the formats; use it as s a reference
or basis on past results if they have chosen the same topic or purely
for references purposes.

Scope and Delimitations of the Study

This study is limited to only ICT students of Don Pablo Lorenzo

Memorial High School – Senior High School standalone of both grade
 14

11 and 12 of both of the section classification, A & B. The population

of the respondents will only be limited to 25 students.
The study will be conducted in the classroom of the
respective sections according to their own time is on their own
convenience It will be conducted in Don Pablo Lorenzo Memorial
High School – Senior High School Standalone, it is strategically
located at Governor Ramos Avenue, Sta. Maria, with an area of 6.5
hectares. The school is about 4 kilometers away from the city proper.
It has 50 Senior High School teachers and it is run by a female
principal with her assistant principal for academic and learner’s
support.

Operational Definition of Terms

 DPLMHS – In this study, this refers to the institution

where the study will be conducted as well as the
where the respondents, which are ICT students, are
located.

 ICT – In this study, this refers to the strand to which

the respondents are limited to.

 Safety Hazard Practices – In this study, this refers to

the practices that the ICT students should follow in
order to avoid injuries.

 TVL – In this study, the researchers limited their

respondents’ track to TVL only.