Assessing safety culture in a gas refinery complex: Development of a tool using a sociotechnical work systems and macroergonomics approach

Forty years of research into safety culture indicates that an appropriate assessment in a safety-critical context will include items that are common safety factors and also items that are specific to the particular industry and community. To develop a new survey tool, suitable for use in the gas refinery industry, a sociotechnical work systems approach was used, to capture all aspects of that work system context. The program was carried out in three parts at a gas refinery complex in the Persian Gulf. First, 18 semi-directed interviews of experienced employees were conducted. Using a confirmatory framework, the rich qualitative data were summarized into structural codes and 12 themes. Second, 15 safety specialists served as an expert panel on proposed items that emerged from the qualitative interviews. Their comments and assessment of content validity led to a 59-item questionnaire, in which the 12 themes were aligned to 12 safety culture factors and five macroergonomic subsystems of the sociotechnical work systems approach used. In the third part, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were examined using a sample of 276 employees, supervisors and managers. The results of CFA indicated that a 56-item assessment tool was valid and reliable. Goodness-of-fit indices had acceptable values and measurement model was confirmed (CMIN/DF = 1.55; GFI = 0.94; AGFI = 0.91; CFI = 0.89; RMSEA = 0.05). The sociotechnical work system approach provided a suitable route to developing the safety assessment tool that recognizes aspects of the gas refinery industry, such as work schedule type, cultural environment, and being away from family support.