Examination of Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The quantitative portion of this study will examine labor laws enforcement following three major hurricanes in the major cities in the United States: Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Harvey in Houston, and Hurricane Sandy in New York City. For each hurricane, the study will examine the number of labor investigations in the year prior to, the year during, and two years following the hurricane's landfall to understand the percent change in the number of labor investigations throughout the community's recovery process. This research is suggesting that in this quantitative study, the independent variable is the hurricane, and the dependent variable is the number of labor investigations. The instance of a hurricane in a major U.S. city will result in an increase or a decrease or labor investigations throughout the disaster cycle.

Data Collection

The quantitative portion of this research will collect data utilizing databases provided by the Department of Labor through OSHA investigations. OSHA investigations data is collected daily from over 120 OSHA Area and State 18b plan office as a raw data set and holds a specialized data category designation as statistical data (OSHA, n.d). The data set coverage has an establishment unit of analysis with a zip code granularity and a graphic coverage of the states and territories of the U.S (OSHA, n.d.).

Data Analysis Procedures

Data will be plotted on a timeline graph of the number OSHA investigations the year prior to, during, and the two years following the hurricane in each city in order to show the progression of OSHA investigations through the disaster cycle of pre, during, and post-disaster. After this, the percentage increased or decreased will be calculated year to year for all three U.S. cities. The following equation will calculate percent change: [(year value – previous year value) / previous year value] * 100. This equation will be used to calculate the percent change between the year before the hurricane and the year of the hurricane, the percentage change between the year of the hurricane and the first year after the hurricane, and finally, the percentage change between the first year after the hurricane and the second year after the hurricane.

Validity and Reliability

OSHA ensures the reliability of their data through consistent standard practices of measuring labor investigations. Each investigation is coded by the establishment, zip code, state, incident type, etc.; these reporting standards are enforced across regional offices (OSHA, n.d.). OSHA states that the data was maintained in the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS). This system was initially designed for use by OSHA staff and authorized state agencies but was made available to the public to allow for the visibility to track investigations and run statistical analysis (OSHA, n.d). OSHA does warn that information is subject to change until an investigation closes; these data changes are mostly citations, settlements, etc. (OSHA, n.d). OSHA also warns that if a user is looking up data for a specific company, that many companies have similar names, which could cause a misrepresentation of data results (OSHA, n.d). This research is not measuring the details of an incident, such as the citations issued after an investigation or what company the investigation occurred. This research is simply looking at the frequency of investigations in a city area.

The validity of the data will come more in to play during the analysis of the raw OSHA data to ensure that the data collected is displayed in a way that is not deceptive, and research is representative of what the data reveals. To avoid deception percentage change can cause, the results will clearly show the original source numbers to provide essential context data. This reasoning is also why the researcher is also choosing to display the data plotted through a line graph. The line graph will color code the three cities by New Orleans as blue, Houston as red, and New York as green. The researcher will then plot the data collected from OSHA on the line by the number of investigations per year (See Figure 1 for an example).