Psychometric properties of a modification of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) for child protection services

Abstract

The concept of a safety culture is crucial to improving organisational risk management in several sectors, including health and aviation. However, social and welfare services are also sectors where organisations should be aware of the risk in their daily practice. The aim of the present article is to confirm the usability of a modified Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) in the Norwegian child protection services CPS by checking a number of its psychometric properties. The SAQ is an instrument that has been widely applied and understood as valid and trustworthy for mapping employees’ views of their organisation’s safety culture. A confirmative factor analysis of data from a national survey of Norwegian CPSs demonstrated that the modified questionnaire has a factor structure which is internally consistent and matches the structure of the widely used SAQ health care questionnaire. The results indicate that the CPS-modified SAQ questionnaire could help understanding and mapping safety culture in the child protection services.