Measurement equivalence of a safety climate measure among Hispanic and White Non-Hispanic construction workers

Abstract

Research continues to expose ethnic disparities in safety and health outcomes, making comparative studies of work-related factors that may explain these disparities increasingly important. Such studies raise issues about the cross-ethnic validity of the measures used to assess the factors of interest, such as safety climate. The current study is the first to examine the measurement equivalence of a multidimensional safety climate scale. A multi-group confirmatory factor analytic approach was used to assess the equivalence of the measure across White English-speaking, Hispanic English-speaking, and Hispanic Spanish-speaking construction workers. Results indicated that the same pattern of factors and equivalent factor loadings adequately represented the safety climate items across groups. However, other differences in item parameters were identified, including non-equivalence of some error variances and intercepts. This study highlights the importance of establishing measurement equivalence before proceeding with mean comparisons among groups. Future research should continue to investigate why differences in safety-related perceptions across ethnicities might exist.