R --Occupational Health Pschology and Safety Climate Pschometric Instrumentation

NA The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center) in support of the FRA Human Factors R&D Program plans to procure expertise in occupational health psychology, industrial psychology and safety climate psychometric instrumentation and sources are sought for this expertise. Current measures of occupational safety performance in the U.S. railroad industry focus almost exclusively on outcome measures such as worker injuries. Fortunately for the industry injury rates have been declining over the last 25 years. The industry incident rate fell from a high of 12.1 incidents per 100 workers per year in 1978 to 3.66 in 1996. Unfortunately for safety researchers and managers this drop in rates has made the use of injury rates as outcome measures suspect by many in the industry. Thi s procurement will focus on assisting the Volpe Center to identify alternative safety measures in the railroad industry. One alternative measure found to relate to safety outcomes and reported in published studies is safety climate. The contractor will be required to provide a finalized safety climate survey with accompanying response form, based on the draft survey provided by the Volpe Center. The contractor will need to have expertise in on line and paper based surveys in order to design the instrument to address psychometric, and usability issues. The contractor shall establish the validity and reliability of the instrument. The contractor will be required to electronically scan and analyze the collected survey data, write a report summarizing the findings using descriptive statis tics and where appropriate inferential statistics. The contractor will be required to advise on the appropriate statistics for the analysis including such techniques as inter-item correlations, correlations, regression and factor analysis. The survey will be administered at three Canadian railroad research sites at three points in time (baseline, mid term and follow up). The contractor must have prior research experience using established psychometric survey instruments in the areas of occupational health psychology, industrial and organization psychology, organizational behavior, occupational safety climate and/or union-management relations. Previous experience with railroads, knowledge of railroad operating practices and railroad worker shift work influences preferred. The contractor must be acceptable to railroad carrier management and the unionized workers at the three sites. Interested offerors must submit a capabilities package in two copies demonstrating their abilities in each of the Organization Behavior and Safety Climate Psychometric Instrumentation areas cited above; this capabilities package should not exceed 5 pages. Interested parties must respond to this announcement in writing within 12 days of publication. FAX 617-494-3024 or email: [email protected] response is acceptable. Telephonic requests will not be honored. This is not a solicitation or pre-solicitation. No award will be made from this Sources Sought announcement. For more business opportunities, visit the web site of http://www.volpe.dot.gov and the Small Business Administration (SBA) web site: http://www.sba.gov. For Minority, Women-Owned, and Disadvantaged Business Enterprises: The Department of Transportation (DOT), Office of Small Business and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) has a program to assist minority, women-owned, and disadvantaged business enterprises to acquire short-term working capital assistance for transportation-related contracts. Loans are available under the DOT Short Term Lending Program (STLP) at prime interest rates to provide accounts receivable financing. The maximum line of credit is $500,000. For further information and applicable forms concerning the STLP, please call the OSDBU at (800) 532-1169.