Safety culture in defence explosive ordnance: developing a safety climate measure

Abstract

It is increasingly recognised within high-consequence industries that a positive safety culture is strongly linked to various safety outcomes and performance indicators. Explosive ordnance (EO) is an area that demands a high level of safety culture, indeed it is a reputational and operational necessity. This paper introduces a measure of safety climate tailored to the EO domain. The paper describes the background to the study, the development of items, and the subsequent factorial validation of scales on the basis of a sample of 272 EO personnel. The factor structure that emerged was very similar to the postulated structure of 14 climate dimensions. These 14 dimensions were shown to represent three meta-themes in the data: Safety Awareness and Responsibility (8 subscales), Safety Resources issues (3 subscales), and Safety System issues (3 subscales). The authors are confident that the EO Safety Survey is a valid, reliable and powerful tool that will support the goal of holistic reform of the EO domain. The EO Safety Survey will inform and enable tailored safety intervention efforts, improved compliance monitoring, and benchmarking studies that, collectively, will enhance the management of the human factors issues that impact on EO work.