danielle smith

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Pain and Suffering Awards for Consumer Product Accidents: Effects of Plaintiff-Defendant Liability and Injury Severity

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2000

A study was carried out to explore the effects of two variables on the amount of pain and sufferi... more A study was carried out to explore the effects of two variables on the amount of pain and suffering awards in a product liability litigation context. The first variable was the level of liability/responsibility allocated to the plaintiff and defendant for the accident and injury. The two levels were 100% and 60% assigned to the defendant, with the corresponding levels for the plaintiff at 0% and 40%. The second variable was the severity of the injury which was characterized as high or low. The two variables were manipulated between participants, resulting in a 2 × 2 design. Four separate accident/injury scenarios were employed, and each participant was presented with all four scenarios in one of the conditions. The scenarios described an automobile accident resulting in paralysis, a workplace accident resulting in chemical burns, a workplace accident resulting in brain damage, and an automobile accident resulting in the death of a small child. Following the presentation of each scen...

Factors affecting the compartmentalization of punitive and compensatory damages

Punitive Damages Awards in Civil Litigation; Effects of Profit Information and Amount of Pain and Suffering Award

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2002

A study addressing jury decisions regarding punitive damages awards in civil litigation was carri... more A study addressing jury decisions regarding punitive damages awards in civil litigation was carried out. Two issues explored were the feet that jurors typically do not have a good metric for assigning a value to such damages and the concept of “leakage.” The latter concept refers to decisions regarding compensatory damages and punitive damages influencing each other; in the law they are supposed to be independent. Forty-two participants were given three scenarios describing accidents, injuries, liability outcomes, and the amounts of economic and non-economic (pain and suffering) awards. Their task was to decide on punitive damages awards. Two variables manipulated in the scenarios were the presence or absence of defendant profit information and the amount (high or low) of the pain and suffering award. Results indicated the main effects of the two variables were not statistically significant. A significant interaction between the profit-information and pain-and-suffering-amount varia...

An Analysis of Telephone Messages: Minimizing Unproductive Replay Time

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2002

This paper reports the results of a research project to study the nature and structure of phone m... more This paper reports the results of a research project to study the nature and structure of phone messages and the design characteristics of phone messaging systems that would optimize the retrieval of relevant message information. of particular concern with respect to the structure of a phone message was the location of a phone number left in the message. in order to replay any portion of a message, most messaging systems require the user to listen to the message from its beginning. Because it was found that phone numbers are typically left towards the end of a message, such a system is quite inefficient. One proposed solution is the implementation of a “back” button. A simple equation is employed to optimize the length of time encompassed by the back button, which would result in substantial time savings to users at least 17 seconds per message in which it was used. The ramifications of such time savings are discussed.

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The effects of defendant profit information on compensatory and punitive damage awards in civil litigation

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Guidelines for Warnings Design: Do They Matter?

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2002

A study was carried out using four measures of effectiveness to compare product warnings that are... more A study was carried out using four measures of effectiveness to compare product warnings that are consistent with the American National Standards Institute Product Safety Signs and Labels standard (ANSI Z535.4) to warnings that are not consistent with the standard. Inconsistent warnings were based on the format of existing product warnings. Two warnings, consistent and inconsistent, for each of ten different products were evaluated: cooking oil, trampoline, paint, dresser, airbag, seat belt, tire, sports utility vehicle, reclining seat and swimming pool. The four effectiveness criteria were judgments of noticeability, likelihood to read, understandability and likelihood of complying. Participants were 176 students with varied majors from five different universities. Results indicated higher levels of judged effectiveness for the warnings that were consistent with the ANSI standard. The differences were statistically significant for all four effectiveness measures for all ten product...

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Defendant wealth and civil litigation: The effects of profit levels on compensatory and punitive damages

PsycEXTRA Dataset

An experiment was conducted in order to examine the effects of defendant wealth on civil litigati... more An experiment was conducted in order to examine the effects of defendant wealth on civil litigation damage award decisions. Wealth was manipulated in the form of company profits. This study combined two moderate profit values with the two extremes used in past research (Paige, et al 2003). All participants read three trial scenarios in which the Defendant Manufacturer was found responsible for the plaintiff's injuries and awarded either economic, punitive, or pain and suffering damages. Interestingly, with the inclusion of more moderate values, profit information was found to significantly influence punitive, pain and suffering, as well as economic damage awards. The pain and suffering relationship was not found in the previous study.

Keyboard shortcut usage: The roles of social factors and computer experience

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Previous research (Lane, Napier, Peres, & Sandor, in press) has shown that despite the fact that ... more Previous research (Lane, Napier, Peres, & Sandor, in press) has shown that despite the fact that it typically takes half as much time to issue a command to a computer application using that command's keyboard shortcut, most people issue a particular command by clicking an icon on a toolbar or by selecting the command from a pull-down menu. This study examined reasons why that might be the case with a structured interview survey and web survey that focused on demographic characteristics of people who do and do not use keyboard shortcuts, as well as social factors of computer use that might influence use of keyboard shortcuts. Participants' shortcut usage was influenced by social factors, such as working in an environment with other shortcut users and experiential factors, primarily the hours spent using a computer per week.

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The effectiveness of warning information in dietary supplement product labels

PsycEXTRA Dataset

The influence of framing on attitudes toward diversity training

Human Resource Development Quarterly, 2003

Although diversity training is becoming an integral component of organizations, little empirical ... more Although diversity training is becoming an integral component of organizations, little empirical research on the topic exists. The study examined here investigated how framing of diversity training (title, focus of content, assignment) and gender influenced participants' attitudes. In this study, 160 adults (72 men, 88 women; 124 white; 36 minority) read a diversity course description and answered questions assessing their attitudes about the course and the organization. Results revealed that (1) a frame with a traditional title and a broad focus was responded to most favorably by participants, (2) men reacted more negatively than women to the diversity training course, and (3) men reacted more negatively than women to a frame with a narrow focus and remedial assignment. Findings are discussed in terms of the effect that different frames can have on participants' pretraining attitudes toward diversity training. Implications for researchers and consultants are also discussed.

The role of patient safety in the device purchasing process

Abstract: To examine how patient safety considerations are incorporated into medical device purch... more Abstract: To examine how patient safety considerations are incorporated into medical device purchase decisions, individuals involved in recent infusion pump purchasing decisions at three different health care organizations were interviewed using a structured interview process. Interview questions covered triggers for the purchasing process; the purchasing process itself; how safety was evaluated and incorporated into the process; and the perceived decision and process quality. The results show strengths and weaknesses ...

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Allocation of Responsibility for Medication Errors

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2002

This study was designed to assess perceptions of responsibility for consumer safety while using p... more This study was designed to assess perceptions of responsibility for consumer safety while using prescription medication. Twenty-five university students were presented with four scenarios depicting an adverse outcome due to negligence involving the administration of a prescription medication. Responsibility could be assigned to the physician, the pharmacist, or the consumer (patient). Scenarios were framed either with no information regarding who committed the error, a physician error, or a patient error. The consumer was given significantly more responsibility overall, mean = 54.59 percent for consumer, compared to 34.48 percent for physician. The percent responsibility allocated to the pharmacist was not a focus of this study as its mean allocation was small, mean = 10.92, and did not vary with experimental manipulations. The shift in responsibility assigned to the consumer when the scenario highlighted consumer error was significantly greater than the corresponding shift in respo...

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