Operational Safety Culture: scale validation for the Brazilian context of air traffic control

Abstract

The purpose of the research evaluate the operational safety culture in air navigation service organizations in Brazil, specifically the Infraero. Despite the instruments that have already been developed abroad, no records of a Brazilian scale that applies to the context of national air traffic were identified. The validation of the scale considered the following dimensions: (1) Informed Culture; (2) Learning and Reporting Culture; (3) Just Culture; (4) Flexible Culture; and (5) Attitudes of Managers towards Safety. Face and content procedures and a pre-test were performed. Data was collected from electronic questionnaires, considering the individuals of interest for the research in Infraero. In order to validate the scale, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were performed, and also reliability analysis. Results indicated that Flexible Culture had the lowest mean value (6.04), followed by Learning and Reporting Culture (7.20), Informed Culture (7.23), Attitudes of Managers towards Safety (8.00) and Just Culture (8.57). Validating the scale in the Brazilian context allowed an advance in studies considering the national air traffic management, contributing to the expansion beyond the mainly European developed researches.