Active caring on the job an important goal in occupational

Question

Active caring on the job. An important goal in occupational safety is ''active caring.'' Employees demonstrate active caring (AC) about the safety of their co-workers when they identify environmental hazards and unsafe work practices and then implement appropriate corrective actions for these unsafe conditions or behaviors. Three factors hypothesized to increase the propensity for an employee to actively care for safety are (1) high self-esteem, (2) optimism, and (3) group cohesiveness. Applied and Preventive Psychology (Winter 1995) attempted to establish empirical support for the AC hypothesis by fitting the model

E(y) = β₀ + β₁x₁ + β₂x₂ + β₃x₃, where

y = AC score (measuring active caring on a 15-point scale)

x₁ = Self-esteem score

x₂ = Optimism score

x₃ = Group cohesion score

The regression analysis, based on data collected for n = 31 hourly workers at a large fiber-manufacturing plant, yielded a multiple coefficient of determination of R² = .362.

(a) Interpret the value of R².

(b) Use the R² value to test the global utility of the model. Use α = .05.