title: Reliability and validity of a safety climate questionnaire.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  It is believed that improved safety culture/climate is a fundamental element to accident prevention. Therefore, development a scale to assess safety climate is a step towards accident control. The purpose of this study was to construct a Persian safety climate questionnaire.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study took place in Tehran and Esfahan oil refineries in Iran in 2010. An initial questionnaire was formed from two previous studies. This tool was translated to Persian based on back translation. The 61-item questionnaire was tested on operational staffs (N=324). Principle component analysis and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization was used to extract factors, in statistical software package SPSS 11.0.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The factors were obtained as Management Commitment to Safety and personnel collaboration 23 variables, 17.33 % of the variance, Safety communication five items, 6.97% of the variance, Supportive environment five items, 6.245% of the variance, Work Environment six items, 5.590% of the variance, Formal Training four items, 4.581% of the variance, Priority of Safety five items, 4.177% of the variance, Personal Priorities and Need for Safety three items, 3.333% of the variance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Achievement of a valid and reliable safety climate tool may bring enormous benefits to the refineries. However, a reliable and valid tool to measure safety climate could be useful in other refineries. Moreover, the generic nature of the safety climate scale may grant its use for other workplaces.
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational Health Engineering, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. arghami88@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Shirazeh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Arghami
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational Health, HSE Department, Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari Province Gas Company, Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari, Iran.
authors.forename: Hakimeh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nouri Parkestani
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Iraj
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Alimohammadi
mesh_terms: D000062:Accidents, Occupational / Q000517:prevention & control*; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003142:Communication; D019652:Extraction and Processing Industry; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008875:Middle Aged; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D009790:Occupations; D015279:Organizational Culture; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012449:Safety; D017751:Safety Management; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D014175:Translating; D014177:Translations; D017132:Workplace
keywords: Accident; Persian; Questionnaire; Refinery; Safety