Characteristics of Safety Personality

Abstract

For high-risk organisations, it is essential that employees demonstrate safety-awareness behaviour, as a reflection of their safety personality, to avoid accidents. Several studies confirm that personality is the individual difference that is most associated with the likelihood of an accident occurring; it is therefore necessary to address the identification and expression of the characteristics of safety personality. This paper aims to present a personality questionnaire the authors have created, which was administered to employees of a large Hungarian company in the electricity supply business with altogether 1273 employees obligated to prioritise workplace safety. The final version of the questionnaire contained 59 items. Based on the statistical results, 58.08% of the variance of total variables was explained by 10 factors; the scales of the questionnaire developed are otherwise reliable. The paper also examines the validation of the scales using different psychological measures.