Safety Climate Questionnaire Research Articles

Reliability and validity of a safety climate questionnaire.

It is believed that improved safety culture/climate is a fundamental element to accident prevention. Therefore, development a scale to assess safety climate is a step towards accident control. The purpose of this study was to construct a Persian safety climate questionnaire. The study took place in Tehran and Esfahan oil refineries in Iran in 2010. An initial questionnaire was formed from two previous studies. This tool was translated to Persian based on back translation. The 61-item questionnaire was tested on operational staffs (N=324). Principle component analysis and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization was used to extract factors, in statistical software package SPSS 11.0. The factors were obtained as Management Commitment to Safety and personnel collaboration 23 variables, 17.33 % of the variance, Safety communication five items, 6.97% of the variance, Supportive environment five items, 6.245% of the variance, Work Environment six items, 5.590% of the variance, Formal Training four items, 4.581% of the variance, Priority of Safety five items, 4.177% of the variance, Personal Priorities and Need for Safety three items, 3.333% of the variance. Achievement of a valid and reliable safety climate tool may bring enormous benefits to the refineries. However, a reliable and valid tool to measure safety climate could be useful in other refineries. Moreover, the generic nature of the safety climate scale may grant its use for other workplaces.

A means for measuring safety climate in the university work setting

To address the risks inherent to various occupations, risk management programs are typically put in place that include worker training, engineering controls, and personal protective equipment. Recent studies have shown that such interventions alone are insufficient to adequately manage workplace risks, and that the climate in which the workers and safety program exist (known as the “safety climate”) is also an important consideration. While safety climate studies have been reported for several industrial settings, published studies on assessing safety climate in the university work setting in the US are absent. Universities are particularly unique workplaces because of the potential exposure to a diversity of agents representing both acute and chronic risks. In addition, principal investigators within these universities operate independently often with minimal administrative oversight making it difficult to build strong a strong safety culture. The goal of this research study was the development and implementation of a measurement tool of safety climate specifically in the university work setting. At five universities, 971 participants completed an online questionnaire to measure the safety climate. The safety climate scores across the five universities ranged from 3.57 to 4.16 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 indicating very high perceptions of safety at these universities. The two lowest overall dimensions of university safety climate were “recognition of safety performance” and “department and supervisor's safety commitment”. The results underscore how the perception of an organization's safety climate is significantly influenced at the local level. The safety climate questionnaire developed for this study may be used in the future to measure safety climate in the university work setting.

Impact of Individual and Team Features of Patient Safety Climate: A Survey in Family Practices

Knowledge about safety climate is fundamental to improving patient safety in health care organizations. Because individual and organizational factors influence the safety climate, we conducted a health care survey of German family practices so we could analyze the impact of the professional group, the professional experience of practice staff, and practice characteristics on perceptions of the safety climate. We wrote to health care assistants and doctors in 1,800 randomly selected family practices in Germany and asked them to complete a newly developed and validated Frankfurt Patient Safety Climate Questionnaire. We conducted a descriptive analyses of items and climate factors, as well as regression analysis, to identify potential predictors of the safety climate in family practice. The response rate from the participating practices was 36.1%. Safety climate was perceived to be generally positive with the exception of the factors of error management and perception of the causes of errors. We discovered that whether or not the entire team had taken part in the survey had a positive influence on most factors. Doctors had more positive perceptions of 4 of 7 factors addressed to both professions. Male participants and doctors showed the most willingness to admit they had made an error. Though the safety climate in German family practices was positive overall, health care professionals' use of incident reporting and a system's approach to errors was fairly rare. When evaluating the safety climate in primary health care practices, respondents' individual characteristics, as well as organizational features, should be taken into account.

Dimensions and reliability of a hospital safety climate questionnaire in Chinese health‐care practice

The aim of the current study was to examine the dimensions and reliability of a hospital safety climate questionnaire in Chinese health-care practice. To achieve this, a cross-sectional survey of health-care professionals was undertaken at a university teaching hospital in Shandong province, China. Our survey instrument demonstrated very high internal consistency, comparing well with previous research in this field conducted in other countries. Factor analysis highlighted four key dimensions of safety climate, which centred on employee personal protection, employee interactions, safety-related housekeeping and time pressures. Overall, this study suggests that hospital safety climate represents an important aspect of health-care practice in contemporary China.

Validation of the group nuclear safety climate questionnaire

IntroductionGroup safety climate is a leading indicator of safety performance in high reliability organizations. Zohar and Luria (2005) developed a Group Safety Climate scale (ZGSC) and found it to have a single factor. MethodThe ZGSC scale was used as a basis in this study with the researchers rewording almost half of the items on this scale, changing the referents from the leader to the group, and trying to validate a two-factor scale. The sample was composed of 566 employees in 50 groups from a Spanish nuclear power plant. Item analysis, reliability, correlations, aggregation indexes and CFA were performed. ResultsResults revealed that the construct was shared by each unit, and our reworded Group Safety Climate (GSC) scale showed a one-factor structure and correlated to organizational safety climate, formalized procedures, safety behavior, and time pressure. “Impact on IndustryThis validation of the one-factor structure of the Zohar and Luria (2005) scale could strengthen and spread this scale and measure group safety climate more effectively.

Safety Climate and Prediction of Ergonomic Behavior

One of the most important ways to prevent accidents is to consider safety climate or culture. Moreover, some studies suggest that behavior contributes to 86%-96% of all injuries. This cross-sectional study took place in an Iranian petrochemical company in 2010. Vinodkumar and Bhasi’s safety climate questionnaire and an ergonomic behavior sampling checklist were the data collection tools. Cronbach’s a for questionnaire reliability was .928. With reference to the results of a pilot study, a sample of 1755 was determined for behavior sampling. We used principal component analysis (PCA) to derive the coefficient of paths in the path model and the Anderson-Rabin method to calculate factor scores. The results showed that safety climate was an effective predictor of ergonomic behavior (p < .01). They also showed the importance of decreasing the number of workers with negative safety climate. Moreover, it is necessary to promote workers’ ergonomic behaviors in the workplace.

Developing a Questionnaire for Measuring Safety Climate in the Workplace in Serbia

This study was conducted because a real method for measuring safety climate had never been developed and assessed in Serbian industry. The aim of this paper was to start the process of developing a safety climate questionnaire that could be used in Serbia. As a starting point a 21-item questionnaire was adopted after an extensive literature review. The questionnaire was distributed at several Serbian factories; 1098 workers responded. After a statistical analysis of the data obtained with the questionnaire and a critical comparison with the available reference results, a final questionnaire with 21 questions, divided into 7 groups, was developed. The 7 groups of questions (factors) were safety awareness and competence, safety communication, organizational environment, management support, risk judgment and management reaction, safety precautions and accident prevention, and safety training.

Junior doctors and patient safety: evaluating knowledge, attitudes and perception of safety climate

IntroductionEngagement of junior doctors in patient safety initiatives is high on the national agenda, but there is a lack of studies evaluating patient safety attitudes among junior doctors.MethodsThe Junior Doctor–Patient...

An exploratory study of migrant workers and safety in three European countries

An exploratory study was carried out in three European countries – Denmark, United Kingdom and the Netherlands – concerning the safety of migrant workers, especially those coming from Eastern European countries. Special attention was given to the relationship between safety and the national background of migrant workers. Forty-four interviews with HSE experts – e.g. regulators, union representatives – in the three countries, a survey using the NOSACQ-50 safety climate questionnaire and an accident data analysis using Danish data have been combined to draw a picture of the situation of migrant workers in the three countries. Although much data is still anecdotal it is concluded that these workers form a vulnerable group. As long as many migrant workers remain unregistered in the country where they work and national accident databases are not sufficiently or systematically coded, the magnitude of the migrant worker problem remains largely elusive.

What do surgical trainees think about patient safety culture, and is this different from their consultants?

Introduction Little is known about the patient safety culture within surgical departments in UK hospitals. What has been done to date is to survey only permanent senior staff opinion of the safety culture in their institution. This study surveyed both consultant and trainee views on perceived patient safety and compared the results between these two groups. Material and methods The previously validated Team Work and Safety Climate Questionnaire was configured in Survey Monkey format and sent to all surgical trainees and consultant surgeons in the South West Strategic Health Authority. Two reminders were sent to achieve as high a return rate as possible. Results Two hundred and ninety-six replies were received. Forty-four percent of trainees and 30% of consultants responded to the survey. Consultants consistently rated a higher safety culture than surgical trainees. Only 2.9% of trainees believe their patient safety concerns would be acted upon by hospital management. There is notable variation in perceived patient safety culture between hospitals. Conclusion This study has suggested that the patient safety culture in hospitals, within a Strategic Health Authority, is variable and sub-optimal when viewed by surgical trainees and their consultants. This study also provides some evidence that the perception of patient safety in an organization varies according to clinical experience. As trainees deliver a great deal of clinical care, surveys of safety culture should include this group. As perceived patient safety culture is correlated to clinical outcomes, validated safety surveys might form part of the assessment of a hospital's performance, along with outcome and patient satisfaction.

The role of personality traits, work motivation and organizational safety climate in risky occupational performance of professional drivers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to combine individual (personality traits and profiles) and organizational (perceived safety climate and work motivation) factors and look for a model that explains safety performance in a sample of professional drivers. The authors hypothesize that the effect of personality on risky driving is moderated by perceived organizational safety climate and work motivation.Design/methodology/approach – The sample consisted of 166 professional drivers (males). The subjects completed the self‐reported questionnaire that consisted of the Big Five Inventory, Driver Behaviour Questionnaire, Work motivation and Safety Climate Questionnaires. Cross‐sectional methodology, analysis of variance, cluster analysis and structural equation modeling were used to predict the relationships between personality traits, organizational factors, and risky driving.Findings – The results revealed that personality profile is very important in occupational setting, predicting work motivation, percei...

Safety Management in a Relationship-Oriented Culture

A relationship-oriented culture predominates in the Greater China region, where it is more important than in Western countries. Some characteristics of this culture influence strongly the organizational structure and interactions among members in an organization. This study aimed to explore the possible influence of relationships on safety management in relationship-oriented cultures. We hypothesized that organizational factors (management involvement and harmonious relationships) within a relationship-oriented culture would influence supervisory work (ongoing monitoring and task instructions), the reporting system (selective reporting), and teamwork (team communication and co-ordination) in safety management at a group level, which would in turn influence individual reliance complacency, risk awareness, and practices. We distributed a safety climate questionnaire to the employees of Taiwanese high-risk industries. The results of structural equation modeling supported the hypothesis. This article also discusses the findings and implications for safety improvement in countries with a relationship-oriented culture.

Development and validation of an Integrated Organizational Safety Climate Questionnaire with multilevel confirmatory factor analysis

Meta-analytic and traditional reviews on safety climate reveal theoretical and methodological safety climate issues still open. The main aim of this study is to propose a questionnaire which combines recent and different approaches to safety climate, trying to give a contribute about these issues. The present research led to the development of a new questionnaire to measure safety climate, suitable for blue-collar workers, and to the evaluation of its psychometric properties, and usefulness to measure safety climate in the industrial sector. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) was used to properly evaluate the factor structure underlying the safety climate questionnaire composed of three scales: organizational safety climate scale, supervisor’s safety climate scale and co-workers’ safety climate scale. The clear distinction, made with the use of three different scales, among safety agents (organization, supervisor, co-workers), allows the assessment of workers’ perceptions focused on each level, and allows to deeply explore, for instance, lateral relationships of supervisor’s safety climate and co-workers’ safety climate, analysing the interactions between the roles of these two safety agents. A two-level design was used, considering the individual level and the work-group level. Data collection involved 1,617 blue-collars from eight Italian manufacturing companies. The MCFA results demonstrated the importance to use proper analysis to study the factor structure of a multilevel construct as safety climate, and confirmed the theoretical structure of safety climate purposed from Griffin and colleagues, using not only psychological climate (i.e., the individual level), but also the group level safety climate.

Evaluation of the Pharmacy Safety Climate Questionnaire in European community pharmacies

To evaluate the internal reliability, factor structure and construct validity of the Pharmacy Safety Climate Questionnaire (PSCQ) when applied to a pan-European sample of community pharmacies. A cross-sectional survey design was used. Community pharmacies in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Great Britain. A total of 4105 members of the community pharmacy workforce, all drawn from one of the five participating countries. Each participant completed a copy of the Pharmacy Safety Climate Questionnaire in his or her respective language and rated the perceived safety of the pharmacy in which he or she worked. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the data identified four factors that accounted for item responses, with 24 of the original 34 items loading onto them. They were labelled organizational learning, blame culture, working conditions and safety focus. These factors were found to have an acceptable level of reliability (with Cronbach's alpha values ranging from 0.70 to 0.92) and to predict the rating of pharmacy safety. This study provided information on the PSCQ's psychometric properties when used in community pharmacies in different European countries. A modified version of the original PSCQ (known as PSCQ-4) is presented, and further work is proposed to demonstrate its application to safety improvements in pharmacies.

Ranking of working shift groups in an Iranian petrochemical company using ELECTRE method based on safety climate assessment results

An effective safety management requires paying attention to human factors for accident prevention. The aim of this study was to evaluation and analysis of safety climate in order to select the best work shift group in an Iranian petrochemical company, in 2010. A cross-sectional study was designed in that safety climate questionnaire were distributed between 151 workers. We used ELECTRE method to find the best work shift group. The number of returned valid questionnaires was 134 out of 151 and response rate was 88.74%. Questionnaire's reliability assessed by Cronbach's alpha was 0.928. The results indicated that 68.7% of workers had positive safety climate. The results also notified a significant relationship between age and safety climate (p < 0.05). Using ELECTRE method, most effective shift group and the least attractive alternatives for intervention were selected in this company. This study showed the importance of attention to positive safety attitude promotion between employees.

Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50): A new tool for diagnosing occupational safety climate

Although there is a plethora of questionnaire instruments for measuring safety climate or culture, very few have proven able to present a factor structure that is consistent in different contexts, and many have a vague theoretical grounding. The Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50) was developed by a team of Nordic occupational safety researchers based on organizational and safety climate theory, psychological theory, previous empirical research, empirical results acquired through international studies, and a continuous development process. Safety climate is defined as workgroup members’ shared perceptions of management and workgroup safety related policies, procedures and practices. NOSACQ-50 consists of 50 items across seven dimensions, i.e. shared perceptions of: 1) management safety priority, commitment and competence; 2) management safety empowerment; and 3) management safety justice; as well as shared perceptions of 4) workers’ safety commitment; 5) workers’ safety priority and risk non-acceptance; 6) safety communication, learning, and trust in co-workers’ safety competence; and 7) workers’ trust in the efficacy of safety systems. Initial versions of the instrument were tested for validity and reliability in four separate Nordic studies using native language versions in each respective Nordic country. NOSACQ-50 was found to be a reliable instrument for measuring safety climate, and valid for predicting safety motivation, perceived safety level, and self-rated safety behavior. The validity of NOSACQ-50 was further confirmed by its ability to distinguish between organizational units through detecting significant differences in safety climate. Relevance to industry NOSACQ-50 will enable comparative studies of safety climate between and within companies, industries and countries. It is suitable for research purposes as well as for practical use in evaluating safety climate status, as a diagnostic tool, and in evaluating the effect of safety climate interventions.

Psychosocial influences on safety climate: evidence from community pharmacies

ObjectiveTo examine the relationship between psychosocial job characteristics and safety climate.DesignCross-sectional survey.SettingCommunity pharmacies in Great Britain.ParticipantsA random sample of community pharmacists registered in Great Britain (n=860).Survey instrumentsEffort–reward imbalance (ERI) indicator...

The Frankfurt Patient Safety Climate Questionnaire for General Practices (FraSiK): analysis of psychometric properties

BackgroundSafety culture has been identified as having a major impact on how safety is managed in healthcare. However, it has not received much attention in general practices. Hence, no instrument...

The influence of organizational factors on safety in Taiwanese high-risk industries

Organizational theorists have recently begun to pay research attention to the workforces of emerging countries in Asia, especially the greater China regions. However, little research has focused on the influence of organizational factors on safety in these countries. This study hypothesized that organizational factors, characterized as safety leadership perspective (management commitment, blame culture) and safety climate perspective (harmonious relationships), would influence group-level safety management, which would in turn influence individual level safety awareness and practices. To test this hypothesis, a safety climate questionnaire was distributed to ten Taiwanese plants in high-risk industries. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the linkages among organizational level factors, work-group-level factors, and workers’ safety awareness and practices. We found that safety leadership style and organizational harmony in Taiwanese high-risk industries can exert significant influences on work-group processes, which in turn have greater effects on individual safety awareness and practices. These findings and implications can serve as a basis for safety improvement in areas of the greater China region.

Can level of safety climate predict level of orientation toward safety in a decision making task?

Establishing the relationship between level of safety climate and safety performance is a current challenge. This work examines the relationship between level of safety climate and orientation toward safety in the decision making process and choice. Alternatively, this work seeks to answer the question of whether level of safety climate can predict safety-oriented decision making. A generalized safety climate questionnaire and a decision making simulation are utilized to examine this relationship. The results indicate that level of safety climate is not a significant predictor of the decision process; however, it was found to be a significant predictor of the selection of safer choices.