Although two of the three legislative studies, which
were conducted in the U.S., reported significant reductions
in injury rates in their original articles, the
nonfatal injury rate in the U.S. construction industry
also dropped considerably in that time period.2 In fact,
there was a less-favorable time trend after the intervention,
which could be due to better reporting of injuries
as a result of increased attention to injuries. Re-analysis
with auto-regressive time series revealed no short-term
(level) or long-term (trend) legislative intervention
effects on the reduction of injuries in the studies.
However, re-analysis confirmed the reported intervention
effect on injuries of the multifaceted safety campaign
and the controlled ITS study concerning a drugfree-
workplace program.
None of the included studies reported changed
behavior as a secondary outcome measure. One study15
reported a decline in the number of paid lost-working
days per injury as a secondary outcome measure, but
re-analysis of the main outcome measure revealed an
underlying downward trend of injuries and no intervention
effect.
Finally, in the case of any drug-testing interventions,
there is still the discrepancy between an employer’s
right to test its workers—especially newly recruited or
probationary employees—versus a worker’s right to
privacy and protection against unreasonable drug
testing.33