The association between safety climate and noncombat injury events among United States Air Force workers

Work-related injuries are a common lagging safety indicator whereas safety climate assessments can help identify constructs serving as leading indicators. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) partnered with the U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF) Safety Center to examine the association between perceptions of safety climate survey constructs and the number of injury events within the DAF workforce.

The DAF administers voluntary, anonymous, occupation-specific safety climate surveys to DAF workers using the internal Air Force Combined Mishap Reduction System (AFCMRS). Survey responses from 2014 to 2018 provided by DAF workers and injury events in maintenance, support, and operations occupations were shared with NIOSH. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed five constructs: Leadership and Communication; Organizational Safety Priority; Error Management; Resource Adequacy; and Deployment/Official Travel Impact. Squadron-level analysis included bivariate correlations and estimated Rate Ratios (RRs).

1,547 squadrons administered the survey, averaging 144 workers and 15.8 reportable injuries per squadron. Higher (more favorable) squadron-level construct scores were consistently correlated with fewer reported injuries (p < 0.001). Controlling for the number of workers, RRs revealed significant reductions in injury rates with each one-unit increase in responses: Leadership and Communication RR = 0.40 (95%CI: 0.32-0.48); Organizational Safety Priority RR = 0.50 (95%CI: 0.40-0.64); Error Management RR = 0.37 (95%CI: 0.30-0.47); Deployment/Official Travel Impact RR = 0.36 (95%CI: 0.29-0.45). Resource Adequacy revealed a non-significant lower injury rate RR = 0.87 (95%CI: 0.73-1.04).

This unique study quantified safety climate and the association with injuries across a multi-year period. While safety climate measurements may be limited by frequent turnover and the self-reported, voluntary, anonymous nature of AFCMRS, the strength of this study is in the census of injuries.

Future research should include longitudinal analyses to examine the impact on injuries when squadron leaders are provided feedback on safety climate survey results.