Safety climate and attitude as evaluation measures of organizational safety

The main aim of this research is to develop a set of evaluation measures for safety attitudes and safety climate. Specifically it is intended: (a) to test the instruments; (b) to identify the essential dimensions of the safety climate in the airport ground handling companies; (c) to assess the quality of the differences in the safety climate for each company and its relation to the accident rate; (d) to analyse the relationship between attitudes and safety climate; and (e) to evaluate the influences of situational and personal factors on both safety climate and attitude. The study sample consisted of 166 subjects from three airport companies. Specifically, this research was centred on ground handling departments. The factor analysis of the safety climate instrument resulted in six factors which explained 69.8% of the total variance. We found significant differences in safety attitudes and climate in relation to type of enterprise. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.