169 Occupational safety study. An important goal in occupational safety is “active caring.” Employees demonstrate active caring 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 of an employee to actively care for safety are (1) high selfesteem,

(2) optimism, and (3) group cohesiveness. Applied

& Preventive Psychology (Winter 1995) attempted to establish empirical support for the active-caring hypothesis by fitting the model E(y) = b0 + b1 x1 + b2 x2 + b3 x3, where y = active@caring 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.
Take a = .05.