The predictive validity of safety climate

Abstract

Problem

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 [Cooper, M. D., & Phillips, R. A. (2004). Exploratory analysis of the safety climate and safety behavior relationship. Journal of Safety Research, 35(5), 497–512; Gillen, M., Baltz, D., Gassel, M., Kirsch, L., & Vacarro, D. (2002). Perceived safety climate, job Demands, and coworker support among union and nonunion injured construction workers. Journal of Safety Research, 33(1), 33–51; Neal, A., & Griffin, M. A. (2002). Safety climate and safety behaviour. Australian Journal of Management, 27, 66–76; Zohar, D. (2000). A group-level model of safety climate: Testing the effect of group climate on microaccidents in manufacturing jobs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(4), 587–596; Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2005). A multilevel model of safety climate: Cross-level relationships between organization and group-level climates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 616–628] who have documented its importance as a factor explaining the variation of safety-related outcomes (e.g., behavior, accidents). 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.

Methods

This study used 292 employees at three locations of a heavy manufacturing organization to complete the 16 item Zohar Safety Climate Questionnaire (ZSCQ) [Zohar, D., & Luria, G. (2005). A multilevel model of safety climate: Cross-level relationships between organization and group-level climates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 616–628]. 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

Results revealed that the ZSCQ: (a) was psychometrically reliable and valid, (b) served as an effective predictor of safety-related outcomes (behavior and accident experience), and (c) could be trimmed to an 11 item survey with little loss of explanatory power.

Impact on Industry

Practitioners and researchers can use the ZSCQ with reasonable certainty of the questionnaire's 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.

Introduction

Traditionally, industrial safety research focused on explaining variation in safety-related outcomes (behavior, accidents, participation, etc.) in terms of technological solutions (e.g., engineering) and human factors (e.g., behavior, attitudes, compliance). Hale and Hovden (1998) noted that the explanatory power of these factors was incomplete and other dimensions were needed to increase understanding of the causation of safety-related outcomes. According to Hale and Hovden, many researchers recognized this weakness and turned their attention to the third age of safety research, where organizational constructs (e.g., culture, safety climate, and organizational commitment) explain additional variation in safety-related outcomes. In 1999, Rochlin published similar conclusions asserting social dimensions were needed to explain variation in safety-related outcomes. Mullen (2004) echoed these assertions and pointed to an organizational influence on safety-related outcomes.

Most research concerning the social dimensions affecting safety-related outcomes focused on constructs such as safety culture (Guldenmund, 2000), safety climate (Zohar, 1980), organizational commitment (Barling & Hutchinson, 2000), and leadership (Hoffman, Morgeson, & Gerras, 2003). Of these, safety climate received substantial attention due to its potential for explaining variation in safety-related outcomes (Dejoy et al., 2004, Gillen et al., 2002, Neal et al., 2000, Zohar, 2000, Zohar and Luria, 2005). In addition, this attention was afforded because of the ease with which safety climate was measured with quantitative questionnaires (Mearns & Flin, 1999).

The by-product of this attention resulted in the creation of several quantitative questionnaires. Researchers documented psychometric properties (reliability, construct validity, content validity) for these instruments, but significant deficiencies remained with respect to the establishment of an association between safety climate and safety-related outcomes (Cooper & Phillips, 2004). While many researchers attempted to address this weakness through concurrent validity, most attempts had weaknesses related to the use of self-reported safety-related outcomes and common method variation. Five studies (Cooper and Phillips, 2004, Gillen et al., 2002, Hoffman and Mark, 2006, Hoffman and Stetzer, 1996, Zohar, 2002), however, were notable exceptions because they documented the ability of safety climate to predict future accidents and safe behavior (predictive validity) using a prospective research design. Although these studies suggested that safety climate predicted safety-related outcomes, additional studies were needed to firmly establish predictive validity.

The study described in this article addressed the need for continued exploration of the ability of safety climate to predict safety-related outcomes. It was based on employee (n = 292) responses to the ZSCQ, observations of safe behavior, and actual injury frequency/severity experience. In addition, it sought to analyze data to determine the degree to which safety climate was associated with injury rates and safe behavior. This article presents the results of this study through a description of the: (a) theoretical framework; (b) methods used to accomplish research objectives; (c) results from the study; and (d) a discussion of the significance and application of major conclusions.