Safety climate of UAE petroleum industry: a cross-validation using confirmatory factor analytic approach

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a safety climate scale for measuring the safety climate in the oil and gas industry. The scale developed through conducting a literature review about the safety climate and constructing a question pool. The number of items was reduced to 51 after performing a screening process. Explanatory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to examine the scale’s construct validity. CFA loadings were statistically significant. All Cronbach’s alpha (a) and composite reliability values support the construct reliability. The outcomes showed acceptable convergent and discriminant validity: AVEs showed acceptable values, and the square roots of AVE values showed higher values than the construct correlation values. Furthermore, all factor loadings exceeded 0.50, and the t-values were statistically significant. CFA loadings were statistically significant. The safety climate measuring scale of 43-instrument items produced in this study is reliable and valid for the oil and gas industry.