Measuring safety climate in aviation: A review and recommendations for the future

This paper reviews 23 studies that have examined safety climate within commercial and military aviation. The safety climate factors identified in the aviation safety climate questionnaires were found to be consistent with the literature examining safety climate in non-aviation high reliability organizations. Therefore, it was concluded that the aviation safety climate tools had some construct validity (the extent to which the questionnaire measures what it is intended to measure). However, the majority of the studies made no attempt to establish the discriminate validity (the ability of the tool to differentiate between organizations or personnel with different levels of safety performance) of the tools. It is recommended that rather than constructing more aviation safety climate questionnaires, researchers should focus on establishing the construct and discriminate validity of existing measures by correlating safety climate with other metrics of safety performance. It is recognized that the accident rate in commercial aviation is too low to provide a sufficiently sensitive measure of safety performance. However, there are other measures of safety performance, collected as part of a company's Aviation Safety Action Program or Flight Operational Quality Assurance, which could be used to assess the discriminate validity of an aviation safety climate tool.

• Record URL:
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VF9-519VV14-1/2/dff14a97f60d545277ce55581dc5b1ab
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/09257535
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission from Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • O'Connor, Paul
  • O'Dea, Angela
  • Kennedy, Quinn
  • Buttrey, Samuel E
• Publication Date: 2011-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Bibliography; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 128-138
• Serial:
  • Safety Science
  • Volume: 49
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0925-7535
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09257535

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Civil aviation; Measurement; Measuring instruments; Military aviation; Questionnaires; Safety culture; Safety factors; Validity
• Uncontrolled Terms: Safety performance
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Aviation; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01323895
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 28 2010 1:30PM