Safety education and control: A tool to measure the safety locus of control
Volume 2, Issue 3, Summer 2012, Pages 1-4
. Maryam Amidi Mazaheri, . Alireza Hidarnia, . Fazlollah Ghofranipour
Abstract Background: Effective safety education can prevent many occupational accidents. To educate
the public about safety effectively, determinants of safe behavior must be addressed. Personality
constructs are among the most important determinants of safe behavior. One of the personality
constructs that has been studied recently in relation to accidents is locus of control. The main
aim of this study was designing, validating, and determining the reliability of safety locus of
control scale. Materials and Methods: This study was a descriptive, cross‑sectional study. The
“forward–backward” procedure was applied to translate safety locus of control scale (Jones
and Becker 1985) from English to Persian. To determine the scientific validity of the scale , face
validity and content validity by expert judgments were used. Internal consistency was determined
using Cronbach’s α‑coefficient. Questionnaires were distributed to a group of 400 workers from
different parts of Isfahan Steel Company. Finally, 317 workers completed the questionnaires.
Exploratory factor analysis was performed with software SPSS13, and confirmatory factor
analysis was performed with software LISREL8.8. Results: The exploratory factor analysis
results revealed that the three components of the items can be extracted from the scale including
internal control (4 questions), environmental and equipment control (4 questions), and chance
and fate (4 questions). Confirmatory factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation results
indicated that the data had good fit with three‑component scale and fit indices were acceptable:
c2
∕df=3.96, df=41, c2
=120.59, RMSIA=0.080, 95% Confidence Interval=0.64–0.097, CFI=0.96,
GFI=0.94, AGFI=0.89. The internal control components and equipment and environmental
control were negatively correlated with each other (P≤0.05, r=−0.41). Also, a weak correlation
between chance and fate and environmental and equipment control was seen (P≤0.05, r=0.31).
Conclusion: In most studies, designing a scale and determining its validity and reliability is
costly and time consuming. The available reliable and valid scale leads to reduced costs and
accelerated research. In other words, duplication will be avoided. The scale obtained in this study
can be used in safety and industrial psychology research.