Risk perception of falls on the same level at workplaces among social welfare workers in Japan

Falls on the same level (FSLs) are a major cause of occupational injuries in the social welfare industry, especially in aging societies. Here, we conducted a questionnaire survey to investigate how social welfare workers perceive the risk of occupational accidents, with a focus on FSLs, and to examine the effects of age on risk perception. Respondents (n=294) rated their estimated likelihood of experiencing five major types of occupational accidents across six levels of injury severity. The results indicated that the FSL risk was not consistently underestimated relative to other accident types. However, when the subjective risk was compared with the objective accident frequency, the non-fatal FSL risk was systematically underestimated, whereas the fatal FSL risk was overestimated. Perceived risk of leaving work for more than 3 months due to non-fatal occupational accidents also decreased with age across accident types, with younger workers reporting the highest estimates and older workers the lowest. These findings suggest that underestimation of FSL risk is specific to certain injury severities and that age-related differences in risk perception are robust. Understanding how workers perceive fall risk may contribute to the development of age-sensitive interventions to improve fall prevention in the social welfare sector.