title: External validity of a generic safety climate scale for lone workers across different industries and companies.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The goal of this study was to examine the external validity of a 12-item generic safety climate scale for lone workers in order to evaluate the appropriateness of generalized use of the scale in the measurement of safety climate across various lone work settings. External validity evidence was established by investigating the measurement equivalence (ME) across different industries and companies.
  
  
  METHODS
  Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)-based and item response theory (IRT)-based perspectives were adopted to examine the ME of the generic safety climate scale for lone workers across 11 companies from the trucking, electrical utility, and cable television industries.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Fairly strong evidence of ME was observed for both organization- and group-level generic safety climate sub-scales. Although significant invariance was observed in the item intercepts across the different lone work settings, absolute model fit indices remained satisfactory in the most robust step of CFA-based ME testing. IRT-based ME testing identified only one differentially functioning item from the organization-level generic safety climate sub-scale, but its impact was minimal and strong ME was supported.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The generic safety climate scale for lone workers reported good external validity and supported the presence of a common feature of safety climate among lone workers. The scale can be used as an effective safety evaluation tool in various lone work situations.
authors.affiliation: Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA; University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA. Electronic address: Yueng-hsiang.Huang@Libertymutual.com.
authors.forename: Yueng-hsiang
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Michelle M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.affiliation: Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA; Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Lauren A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.affiliation: Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garabet
authors.affiliation: Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, Hopkinton, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Wen-Ruey
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Chang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry; D008875:Middle Aged; D015279:Organizational Culture; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012449:Safety; D017751:Safety Management; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014186:Transportation
keywords: Confirmatory factor analysis; External validity; Generic safety climate; Item response theory; Lone workers; Measurement equivalence