Psychological safety in interdisciplinary virtual student project teams: A validation study

Abstract

Psychological safety is an important variable for understanding teams, as it is positively associated with team performance, team learning, and creativity. A large body of research has been conducted on psychological safety in teams that work face-to-face. The aim of this study was to investigate the construct validity of Edmondson’s Team Psychological Safety Scale in the context of virtual student teams working on a joint project. The sample used in this study consisted of 344 students who took part in an interdisciplinary project-based master’s course at a Norwegian university. The data were analyzed with single-level confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multilevel CFA (MCFA). Reliability was investigated with intra-class correlation coefficients, in addition to Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega. Overall, the reliability estimates and goodness-of-fit estimates from the CFAs demonstrated an adequately good level of fit for the one-factor structure of psychological safety in the context of virtual student project teams. The Team Psychological Safety Scale was shown to have acceptable levels of construct validity for the virtual student project teams.