An important goal in occupational safety is "active caring." Employees demonstrate active caring (AC) about the safety of their coworkers 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 & 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 (active caring score, 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.