Predictive Validity of Safety Climate
Safety professionals have increasingly turned their attention to social science for insight into the causation of industrial accidents. One social construct, safety climate, has been examined by several researchers who have documented its importance as a factor explaining the variation of safety-related outcomes (e.g. behavior, accidents, etc.) Researchers have developed instruments for measuring safety climate and have established some degree of psychometric reliability and validity. The problem, however, is that predictive validity has not been firmly established, which reduces the credibility of safety climate as a meaningful social construct. The research described in this article addresses this problem and provides additional support for safety climate as a viable construct and as a predictive indicator of safety-related outcomes. 292 employees at three locations of a heavy manufacturing organization completed the 16 item Zoha Safety Climate Questionnaire (ZSCQ). In addition, safety behavior and accident experience data were collected for 5 months following the survey and were statistically analyzed (structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, etc.) to identify correlations, associations, internal consistency, and factorial structures. Results revealed that the ZSCQ (i) was psychometrically reliable and valid, (ii) served as an effective predictor of safety-related outcomes (behavior and accident experience), and (iii) could be trimmed to an 11 item survey with little loss of explanatory power. Practitioners and researchers can use the ZSCQ with reasonable certainty of the questionnaires reliability and validity. This provides a solid foundation for the development of meaningful organizational interventions and/or continued research into social factors affecting industrial accident experience.
predictive validity safety climate safety culture structural equation modeling factor analysis
JOHNSON Stephen
University of Phoenix School of Business Puyallup,WA,98374,USA
国际会议
The 2008 International Symposium on Safety Science and Technology(2008年安全科学技术国际会议)
北京
英文
13-21
2008-09-24（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）