Basic Survey background

This survey is modeled after online safety climate surveys originally developed and successfully applied in Naval Aviation. Following successful application of online survey methods for the Navy, Dr. Anthony Ciavarelli, developed a commercial version of the online safety climate survey referred to as the Organizational Safety Effectiveness Survey (OSES).

OSES has been applied in numerous high-hazard business sectors, including helicopter off-shore oil and gas transportation companies (PHI, and The Bristow Group), Air Medical (HealthNet, and PHI), Aerospace (Lockheed Martin, NASA-Space Centers and NASA Flight Centers), commercial aviation, (Qantas Airways and Qantas Group), healthcare (Totally Kids Specialty Healthcare-ICU), and energy (Fortis Alberta). Derivatives of the OSES have also have been used in US Hospitals and Medical Centers, and at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear research facility.

Human Factors Associates has also developed the High Reliability Safety Effectiveness Survey (HROES)®. The (HROES)® is based upon the same principles as OSES, but takes into consideration those organizations that operate in high-risk environments, but are not necessarily exposed to physical hazards. Such industries include Banking, Investment Companies, Financial Services, and Brokerage Insurance firms.

Both surveys include "closed" questionnaire "Likert type" items that require you to rate each survey item in terms of your agreement or disagreement with a specific statement, like this one:

"Our managers do not hesitate to correct unsafe behavior."

Each item requires you to select the level of agreement which best describes your reaction to the statement, using the following categories:

(1) Strongly disagree (2) Disagree (3) Neutral (4) Agree (5) Strongly Agree

You are also given the option to check "Not Applicable" or "Don't Know," on the rating items, if a particular question does not apply to you or your organization or to your specific work center, or you simply do not have enough information to rate the item.

At the end of the survey, you will be asked to enter a minimum amount of personal information such as your job title, years of service, department or work group. This information is used only for analyzing data at very high "aggregate" levels. Personal information is never used to try to identify any particular person. In some cases, when answering these particular personal demographic items, you may be allowed to respond, "Decline to answer", if you believe in any way such information may compromise your identity.

Example of a "closed" questionnaire item:

1. I believe that the company has an effective safety reporting process. Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Not Applicable

Finally, you will be provided an opportunity to voice your opinion by making comments and suggestions on the "open-ended" survey item section. Here again, you should be as candid as possible. No attempt will be made to identify you.

1. The most significant safety hazards that could lead to an accident at the company today are:

If you would like more detailed information about survey design, click here: More About Survey.