| United States (U.S.) aviation officials estimated that 15% of aircraft accidents result from mechanic error and these errors arise from poor human factors practices. The United Kingdom's (U.K.) aviation officials recognized the effects of poor human factors practices, but implemented regulations to control human factors practices and reduced the U.K. accident rate to 6%. A quantitative, ex post facto analysis of accident rates was used to investigate the problem of the higher U.S. rate when compared to the U.K. rate. No human participants were involved; samples of accident reports were taken from the U.K. databases before and after the implementation of the regulation. An analysis of sampled reports determined the accident rate in each sample and a chi-square analysis compared these rates to ascertain the effect of regulations in the U.K. The chi-square analysis detected no significant difference in U.K. accident rates before and after regulation, chi2(1, N = 276) = 1.27, p = .26. To provide for data triangulation, U.S. accident records underwent an identical sampling and analysis procedure yielding an accident rate suitable for comparison to the U.K. rate. These U.K. and U.S. rates were used in a chi-square comparison of nations with and without regulations; no significant difference was detected, chi 2(1, N = 276) = .85, p = .36. In the comparison between U.K. and U.S. data, accident rates in both nations declined by similar amounts (6% and 5%, respectively) despite the absence of regulation in the U.S. In this study, human factors regulations did not significantly affect the U.K. maintenance related accident rate. The study findings did not support institutionalism theory. This research was limited to two national aviation systems; future research efforts might expand this comparison to other nations to provide more information about the effect of human factors regulations. |
