Aim:To review quantitative studies of safety climate in health care to examine the psychometric properties of the questionnaires designed to measure this construct. Method: A systematic literature review was undertaken to study sample and questionnaire design characteristics (source, no of items, scale type), construct validity (content validity, factor structure and internal reliability, concurrent validity), within group agreement, and level of analysis. Results: Twelve studies were examined. There was a lack of explicit theoretical underpinning for most questionnaires and some instruments did not report standard psychometric criteria. Where this information was available, several questionnaires appeared to have limitations. Conclusions: More consideration should be given to psychometric factors in the design of healthcare safety climate instruments, especially as these are beginning to be used in large scale surveys across healthcare organisations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.