Validation of a Chinese version of Zohar and Luria’s shortened safety climate measure

Previous studies have shown that safety climate, as the perceived priority in organizations, is associated with occupational accidents and injuries. Although a few safety climate measures have been developed to meet the needs of different industries in Taiwan, a general safety climate measure in Chinese is still not available. This study aimed to examine the validity and reliability of a Chinese safety climate measure translated from a shorter version of (Zohar and Luria’s Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 616-628, 2005) safety climate measure. After excluding 35 invalid responses, 513 employees working in 61 teams in four companies from the transportation (N = 108), high-tech (N = 253), construction (N = 95), and manufacturing (N = 57) industries participated in the current study, with a response rate of 92.54% (out of 590 distributed questionnaires). The results showed that a Chinese version of (Zohar and Luria’s Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 616-628, 2005) shortened safety climate measure had high reliability and satisfactory validity with safety motivation, safety-specific transformational leadership, safety behaviors (criterion-related validity), and other safety climate measures (convergent validity) at the individual and team levels. Therefore, this measure can be used as a reliable and effective assessment tool for monitoring occupational safety across industries in Taiwan.