Assessment of Psychometric Properties (validity and reliability) of Safety Climate Questionnaire: Factor Analysis Application

Safety climate has shown its ability to predict important safety results, such as perceived risk, accidents and injuries. It is important to understand the psychometric properties of instruments used to measure safety climate before they are used in the setting of factories and workplaces. We explore the reliability and validity of safety climate questionnaire in Qazvin industries. Furthermore, correlations between accident rate and safety climate factors were explored. A study using a questionnaire was conducted on 380 employees in eight major companies in Qazvin, Iran. A 43-item safety climate questionnaire was developed after a scientific literature review and consultation with safety experts. Seventy five percent of the data gathered were subjected to principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation, using SPSS software. The remaining data (25%) applied for running confirmatory factor analysis using the AMOS 16.0 structural equation modeling program. Explanatory factor analysis displayed 8 factors which together explained 68.46% of the total variance. Cronbach Alpha (Internal consistency) across items in each of the 8 factors and that of the total scale were found acceptable. A 37-item questionnaire measuring safety climate was extracted from the original 43 items. Finding of confirmatory factor analysis was revealed to be a satisfactory fit index (CFI=0.91, TLI= 0.93, RMSEA= 0.044, =3.41). The safety climate scores calculated were found to have significant negative correlation with self-reported accident rates showing good predictive validity. One way ANOVA results display that the companies’ mean safety climate scores vary significantly from each other indicating that companies have different safety climate levels. The Safety Climate Questionnaire demonstrated good psychometric properties. This study has recognized Management commitment for safety and safety priority in workplace, employees knowledge and compliance from safety rules, employees attitude toward safety, workers participation and commitment to safety, safeness of work environment, and emergency preparedness in the organization, priority for safety over production and risk justification as the 8 safety climate factors in the Qazvin industries. This study provides benchmark scores for each safety climate factor with which organizations or even individual departments can be compared based on factor scores.