Development and validation of the fire service safety climate scale

Understanding the climate of safety is a core initiative of the US fire service in its quest to reduce injuries, fatalities, and toxic exposures linked to occupational disease. The purpose of this study was to develop a fire service safety climate scale to support this goal. Survey development followed an exploratory sequential mixed methods design combining qualitative methods (interviews and focus groups with 123 firefighters to generate items), and quantitative methods (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses; multi-level models) to examine the survey’s psychometric properties in a geographically-stratified random sample of 130 fire departments including 615 stations and 8575 firefighters. Based on the EFA results, a 14-item multi-level measure of fire service safety climate containing two factors—management commitment (fire department-level) and supervisor support (fire station-level)—was developed. Results of multi-level CFAs indicated acceptable fit of the measurement model, supporting construct validity. Multi-level path analyses showed that fire service safety climate scores were significantly related to safety-related outcomes such as injury rates and safety compliance along with well-being focused outcomes such as job satisfaction, burnout, and employee engagement, supporting criterion-related validity. A reliable and valid fire service safety climate scale was developed. The scale’s dimensions of management commitment within fire department and supervisor support within stations are embedded in a larger instrument, the Fire service Organizational Culture of Safety survey (FOCUS). This simple tool allows fire departments to assess shared perceptions of safety policies and practices and the impact of such perceptions on safety and organizational outcomes.