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This study used a prospective design to assess whether 12 items from the Command Safety Assessment Survey (CSAS) can be used to differentiate between U.S. Naval aviation squadrons who have had a mishap within a recent period of time, and those that have not. Logistic regression modeling was carried out using the survey responses of U.S. Naval aircrew (n = 23,442) and mishap data. The models that were used to attempt to predict severe and moderately severe mishaps together, performed better than the models that used subsets of the mishaps data. It was found that three of the CSAS items had some limited value in predicting mishap risk. Personnel in squadrons with a low probability of mishap more strongly agree with the need to monitor personnel and integrate safety and operations, than aircrew in squadrons with a higher probability of mishap. However, the aircrew in squadrons with a higher probability of mishap also more strongly agrees that persistent rule violators will jeopardize their career, compared to personnel in squadrons with a low probability of mishaps. This finding suggests that blame and punishment are not constructive in efforts to promote safety at work. This study would seem to support the premise that safety climate and safety performance are weakly related. It is recommended that researchers would be better advised to attempt to establish the discriminate validity of their questionnaire through self-reported safety attitudes and behaviors, rather than mishap data. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting 2011. The purpose of this paper was to carry out a factor analysis of 23,968 responses by U.S Naval aviators to 12 items from the Command Safety Assessment Survey (CSAS), and identify whether there were differences in safety climate based upon rank or aviation community. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis techniques it was possible to establish a stable two factor solution. For factor one (personnel leadership) no significant effects of rank or aviation community were found. For factor two (availability of resources) although there was not a significant main effect of rank, there was a significant main effect of aviation community, and a significant interaction. These significant findings were attributed to the unique mission of training squadrons and the junior officers in them.

The purpose of this literature review is to provide the background to an evaluation of the utility of the Command Safety Assessment Survey (CSAS) as a valid predictor of future mishaps. The end goal is to be able to use the survey to identify at risk U.S. Naval squadrons prior to the occurrence of mishaps. Safety climate describes employees' perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs about risk and safety (Mearns & Flin, 1999). Safety climate is most commonly evaluated using questionnaires. Although assessments of safety climate are not widespread in civil aviation, the United States Navy has been using the CSAS since 2000 to measure the safety climate of aviation squadrons. This review argues that a comprehensive assessment of the construct (the extent to which the questionnaire measures what it is intended to measure) and discriminate validity (correlate the data from the questionnaire with a criterion variable, such as accidents) of the CSAS should be carried out. This assessment is necessary to ensure that squadron Commanding Officers, and senior leadership, are being provided with valid and reliable information on squadron safety climate. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the construct validity of the 61-item command safety assessment survey (CSAS) using the responses of 110,014 U.S. Naval aircrew. Utilizing a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we were unable to identify a stable factor structure from the CSAS data. We believe that this finding was because of the effect of the nonconstant variance of the data, which was due to the large proportion of participants using a satsificing strategy (respondents interpret each question superficially and select what they believe to be a reasonable answer). Fortunately, since 2006, the amount of time taken by respondents to complete the survey was collected. This time to complete data was then used as a metric to identify the respondents utilizing an optimizing strategy (respondents generating the optimum answer). A total of 2,344 responses were retained for analysis. We also elected to discard the CSAS items that had low variability. Using the truncated dataset, we carried out an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and were able to establish a stable, 12-item, two-factor (named personnel leadership, and integration of safety and operations) model. Based on the analysis, recommendations for improving the CSAS were made. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.