[Design and determine validity and reliability of safety locus of control scale in Isfahan steel company workers]

ABSTRACT

The degree to which a person perceives that the outcomes of the situations they experience are under their personal control is a psychological variable known as Locus of Control [LOC]. Safety LOC is the construct that specifically address the internal and external LOC in industrial domain. Previous research suggest that safety locus of control can be assessed and used to predict safe behaviors. The main aim of this study was designing, validating, and determining the reliability of safety locus of control scale. Four hundred workers of Isfahan Steel Company participated in this study. The reliability coefficients were calculated in two different methods: test-retest and Cronbach alpha. In order to survey validity of the scale we used three methods including face validity, content validity and construct validity. We established the content validity of the Persian translation by translating [and then back-translating] each item from the English version into the Persian version. Exploratory principal components analysis yielded a three-factor structure that explaining a considerable proportion of the total variance [63.5]. Moreover the fit indices of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis turn out were sufficient to support three-factor structure. In addition, the reliability results were acceptable, too. In most studies, designing, validating and determining the reliability of scales are time consuming and costly and if there are valid and reliable scales in different topics, could avoid repetitious works in researches. The results showed that the reliability and validity of Safety Locus of Control was acceptable and respectable and is suggested as an applicable scale for industrial psychology and safety studies in Iran