Proactive-Safety Role Orientation questionnaire

1. Abstract

The Proactive-Safety Role Orientation questionnaire (PRO-SAFE) is an advanced psychometric instrument engineered to operationalize and evaluate the psychological, cognitive, and motivational mechanisms that propel workers to actively engage in workplace safety beyond mere passive compliance. Rooted in contemporary organizational psychology and occupational health sciences, the PRO-SAFE instrument shifts the analytical paradigm from reactive safety metrics (such as lost-time injuries and incident rates) to proactive safety citizenship. The questionnaire comprises 24 self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale, systematically organized into six foundational psychological dimensions: Role Breadth Self-Efficacy, Control Perception, Psychological Ownership, Felt Responsibility, Anticipation Orientation, and Improvement Orientation.

The cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric validation of the Persian version of the PRO-SAFE questionnaire, conducted among industrial employees in hazardous environments, substantiated its multidimensional construct validity and statistical reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis verified the hypothesized six-factor architecture, demonstrating structural invariance across occupational contexts. The internal consistency of the subscales yielded Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients ranging from 0.717 to 0.880, alongside a Guttman split-half reliability coefficient of 0.932. Content validity was rigorously established with a Content Validity Index (CVI) of 0.83 and a Content Validity Ratio (CVR) of 0.85. Furthermore, convergent validity was evidenced by significant bivariate correlations (ranging from r = 0.372 to 0.792) with established measures of safety compliance and safety participation from Neal and Griffin’s safety performance framework. The PRO-SAFE questionnaire represents an empirically robust diagnostic and evaluative tool for occupational hygienists, organizational psychologists, and safety engineers seeking to quantify the motivational precursors of proactive safety behaviors and foster high-reliability organizational cultures.

2. Keywords

Proactive safety, Occupational health and safety, Psychometrics, Safety role orientation, Safety motivation, Organizational citizenship behavior, Confirmatory factor analysis, Workplace safety climate, Role breadth self-efficacy, Industrial ergonomics

3. Authors

The psychometric validation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Persian PRO-SAFE questionnaire were executed by an interdisciplinary consortium of occupational health scientists, biostatisticians, and ergonomists:

• Reza Jafari Nodoushan — Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
• Gholam Hossein Halvani — Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
• Reyhane Sefidkar — Center for Healthcare Data Modeling, Departments of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
• Hamidreza Mokarami — Department of Ergonomics, School of Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
• Mahdi Jafari Nodoushan (Corresponding Author: [email protected]) — Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.

The original theoretical conceptualization and foundational structural modeling of the proactive-safety role orientation construct were established by Maurizio Curcuruto, Kathryn J. Mearns, and Marco Giovanni Mariani (2016), with subsequent structural modeling conducted alongside Mark A. Griffin (2018).

4. Purpose

Traditional frameworks in occupational health and safety (OHS) have historically operated within a reactive and compliance-centric paradigm. Historically, organizational safety interventions have concentrated almost exclusively on monitoring lagging indicators, such as injury frequency, occupational illnesses, equipment damage, and standard regulatory compliance violations. While mandatory adherence to safety protocols is indispensable in hazardous work environments, empirical evidence across high-risk industries—including metallurgy, petrochemical extraction, manufacturing, and construction—indicates that standard compliance alone is insufficient to prevent catastrophic systemic failures or emergent industrial hazards.

Complex, dynamic sociotechnical systems generate unanticipated contingencies, ambiguous hazards, and non-routine operating conditions where pre-established rules fail to provide adequate prescriptive guidance. Under such conditions, organizational resilience hinges on the proactivity of the workforce. Proactivity in safety involves an employee’s deliberate, self-starting, future-focused, and change-oriented behavior designed to identify latent hazards, improve operational processes, and mitigate potential dangers before they materialize into accidents. The Proactive-Safety Role Orientation questionnaire (PRO-SAFE) was engineered specifically to diagnose and measure the latent psychological orientations and motivational states that drive workers to transition from passive rule-followers to active safety initiators.

From an applied research and organizational intervention standpoint, the PRO-SAFE questionnaire serves multiple objectives:

• Psychological Diagnostic Assessment: It enables safety professionals and organizational researchers to assess the psychological readiness of workers to assume personal agency in safety stewardship, identifying specific cognitive deficits (e.g., low perceived control or constrained role breadth) that hinder proactive behaviors.
• Targeted Intervention Formulation: Rather than applying generic safety training programs, organizations can utilize PRO-SAFE dimensional profiles to tailor interventions. For example, low scores on psychological ownership suggest the need for participatory ergonomic programs and devolved decision-making, whereas low scores on anticipation orientation warrant predictive hazard identification training.
• Safety Culture and Climate Evaluation: The scale acts as an actionable proxy for the subjective internalization of an organization’s safety climate, evaluating whether the prevailing organizational norms actually empower workers to speak up and initiate systemic changes.
• Predictive Occupational Health Modeling: In academic research, the instrument serves as an essential mediating and moderating variable within structural equation models that examine the nomological network connecting leadership styles (such as transformational or servant leadership), safety climate, work design, and downstream safety performance metrics.

5. Psychological Construct

The core construct measured by the instrument—Proactive-Safety Role Orientation—is a multidimensional psychological orientation that defines how employees perceive, internalize, and enact their role boundaries regarding workplace safety. Rather than conceptualizing safety as an externally enforced contractual obligation, proactive role orientation conceptualizes safety as an expansive, self-directed, and personal mission. The construct synthesizes six distinct, intercorrelated psychological dimensions:

1. Role Breadth Self-Efficacy (RBSE)

Originating from generalized proactivity literature, Role Breadth Self-Efficacy in safety refers to an individual’s subjective confidence in their cognitive and behavioral capacity to successfully execute proactive, integrative, and interpersonal safety responsibilities that extend beyond standard task requirements. Workers with elevated RBSE feel capable of analyzing plant-wide hazard patterns, communicating safety concerns directly to senior management, leading safety committee discussions, and mentoring colleagues on complex safety guidelines.

2. Control Perception

Control Perception reflects the employee’s subjective assessment of their personal agency, latitude, and systemic power to meaningfully alter and enhance safety conditions within their organizational unit. Grounded in psychological theories of locus of control and perceived behavioral control, this dimension captures whether an employee views the safety architecture as malleable and responsive to their operational input, or as a rigid, unyielding bureaucratic system where personal agency is ineffective.

3. Psychological Ownership

Psychological Ownership represents that cognitive-affective state in which an individual worker feels that the safety of their work environment, their colleagues, and operational procedures belongs to them personally (“safety is my responsibility”). Rather than viewing safety protocols as corporate mandates imposed by managerial hierarchies, an employee with high psychological ownership internalizes safety goals as personal commitments, experiencing personal accountability for workplace hazards and well-being.

4. Felt Responsibility

Felt Responsibility measures an employee’s internal moral obligation and psychological drive to actively intervene, rectify unsafe operational conditions, and advocate for procedural enhancements, regardless of formal job descriptions. Workers with high felt responsibility reject the psychological tendency to engage in bystander apathy or delegate hazard resolution to dedicated safety inspectors, perceiving personal accountability to initiate corrective actions proactively.

5. Anticipation Orientation

Anticipation Orientation captures a future-oriented, predictive cognitive mindset directed toward scanning the sociotechnical environment to foresee prospective hazards, latent systemic risks, and emergent failure modes before they can materialize into incidents. This dimension embodies temporal vigilance, wherein employees continuously analyze operating parameters, equipment wear, operational changes, and human factors to preempt failure scenarios.

6. Improvement Orientation

Improvement Orientation reflects a continuous, change-oriented behavioral predisposition aimed at questioning existing safety baselines and challenging the operational status quo. Rather than resting content with basic adherence to established safety standard operating procedures (SOPs), individuals characterized by high improvement orientation constantly seek out novel, more reliable, and ergonomically superior methods of conducting operations to prevent human error and optimize systemic resilience.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Proactive-Safety Role Orientation questionnaire is rooted in an integration of proactive motivation theory, social cognitive theory, job design theory, and safety citizenship frameworks. The instrument’s theoretical architecture derives primarily from the Model of Proactive Motivation articulated by Parker, Bindl, and Strauss (2010), adapted to the occupational safety domain by Curcuruto, Mearns, and Mariani (2016).

The “Can Do, Reason To, and Energized To” Motivational Pathways

Parker and colleagues postulated that proactive behavior does not arise spontaneously; rather, it is sustained by three distinct motivational drivers: “Can Do”, “Reason To”, and “Energized To” motivational states. The PRO-SAFE questionnaire directly operationalizes these cognitive-motivational engines within the occupational health domain:

• “Can Do” Motivation: This pathway pertains to perceived competence, capability, and systemic efficacy. In the PRO-SAFE instrument, this is manifested through Role Breadth Self-Efficacy and Control Perception. Informed by Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, an employee must possess strong mastery expectations to initiate change in safety processes. Without high self-efficacy and perceived operational control, workers experience psychological paralysis, assuming that any attempt to rectify complex systemic hazards will be unsuccessful.
• “Reason To” Motivation: Proactivity requires cognitive rationale and purpose. Why should a worker expend discretionary effort, risk interpersonal friction, or challenge managerial protocols to enhance safety? The PRO-SAFE operationalizes this through Psychological Ownership and Felt Responsibility. Drawing upon Pierce, Kostova, and Dirks’ theory of psychological ownership, when an individual equates organizational safety with their personal psychological domain, the motivation to protect and improve that domain becomes intrinsic. Furthermore, Morrison and Phelps’ (1999) work on “taking charge” demonstrates that felt responsibility serves as the critical psychological catalyst converting passive awareness into proactive intervention.
• “Energized To” / Cognitive-Behavioral Enactment: Proactive motivation is actualized through forward-thinking and change-oriented focus. The PRO-SAFE dimensions of Anticipation Orientation and Improvement Orientation reflect the cognitive manifestation of this proactive energy, directly channeling internal motivational states into concrete environmental scanning, problem anticipation, and the formulation of constructive, safety-enhancing adaptations.

Integration with Safety Citizenship and Role Performance Theories

The questionnaire also integrates the theoretical advances of Griffin, Neal, and Parker (2007) regarding work role performance in uncertain and interdependent environments. Griffin and colleagues established that modern performance encompasses proficiency, adaptivity, and proactivity across individual, team, and organizational levels. Curcuruto and Griffin (2018) subsequently demonstrated that safety citizenship behaviors (SCB)—such as initiating safety improvements, voice behavior, and helping peers—are heavily mediated by affective commitment, psychological ownership, and expansive safety role orientations. Consequently, PRO-SAFE does not merely assess general personality traits; it measures a dynamic, malleable socio-cognitive role orientation shaped by the workplace environment, leadership practices, and organizational work design.

7. Validity

The psychometric integrity of the Persian version of the PRO-SAFE questionnaire was systematically evaluated through comprehensive content, construct, and convergent validation procedures among industrial workers in heavy manufacturing environments (Nodoushan et al., 2023).

Content Validity

The content validity of the instrument was assessed through both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Following initial translation utilizing Brislin’s classical forward-backward translation protocol, the instrument was subjected to evaluation by an expert multidisciplinary panel consisting of occupational health engineers, ergonomics specialists, organizational psychologists, and safety managers:

• Content Validity Index (CVI): Evaluated based on item relevance, clarity, and simplicity, yielding an overall scale-level CVI of 0.83, satisfying the criteria established by Lynn (1986) and Polit and Beck (2006) for robust content adequacy.
• Content Validity Ratio (CVR): Assessed against Lawshe’s minimum thresholds based on panel size, the cumulative CVR achieved 0.85, confirming that all 24 items were judged essential for measuring the target psychological domains.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was evaluated by examining the empirical relations between the PRO-SAFE dimensions and established behavioral markers within the occupational safety domain. The construct validity of the scale was tested via bivariate Pearson correlation analyses with the standardized Persian adaptation of Neal and Griffin’s (2006) Safety Performance Scale (validated in Persian by Kalteh et al., 2021), which differentiates between two core dimensions of safety performance: Safety Compliance (mandated behaviors) and Safety Participation (voluntary, citizenship-oriented behaviors).

Empirical analyses confirmed robust convergent validity:

• The PRO-SAFE dimensions demonstrated statistically significant positive correlations with Neal and Griffin’s safety performance subscales, with correlation coefficients ranging from r = 0.372 to 0.792 (p < 0.001).
• In theoretical alignment with proactivity models, the dimensions of the PRO-SAFE scale—particularly Role Breadth Self-Efficacy, Felt Responsibility, and Improvement Orientation—exhibited substantially stronger correlations with Safety Participation than with standard Safety Compliance. This finding demonstrates the instrument’s capacity to isolate discretionary, proactive safety motivations from mere compliance-based adherence.

Discriminant Validity

The distinctness of the six factors was evaluated during the confirmatory structural evaluations. Inter-factor correlations among the six latent constructs, while positive and statistically significant (reflecting the overarching higher-order construct of proactive role orientation), did not exceed the problematic multicollinearity threshold (r > 0.85), providing empirical support for the discriminant validity of the individual subscales.

8. Reliability

The statistical reliability and internal consistency of the Persian PRO-SAFE questionnaire were established through classical test theory metrics, verifying that the tool demonstrates high measurement precision across operational samples.

Internal Consistency Metrics

The internal consistency of the PRO-SAFE questionnaire was calculated both at the omnibus scale level and across each of the six discrete psychological subscales. The Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients are summarized below:

• Omnibus Scale Alpha: α = 0.72, demonstrating adequate global internal consistency across the entire 24-item battery.
• Subscale Alpha Coefficients: Across the six specific latent subscales, Cronbach’s alpha values demonstrated moderate-to-excellent reliability, ranging from 0.717 to 0.880:
• Role Breadth Self-Efficacy (Items A1–A4): α = 0.812 to 0.880 range across subsamples.
• Control Perception (Items A5–A8): α ≥ 0.717, reflecting acceptable coherence for cognitive agency evaluation.
• Psychological Ownership (Items A9–A12): α ≥ 0.764, establishing stable internal consistency.
• Felt Responsibility (Items A13–A16): α ≥ 0.782, indicating strong thematic cohesion.
• Anticipation Orientation (Items A17–A20): α ≥ 0.745, demonstrating reliable predictive orientation measurement.
• Improvement Orientation (Items A21–A24): α ≥ 0.834, indicating high consistency for change-oriented metrics.

Split-Half Reliability

To further examine measurement stability without assuming strictly parallel test halves, the researchers computed the Guttman Split-Half Reliability Coefficient, which attained an exceptional value of 0.932. This high split-half coefficient confirms that the items possess high equivalence and that measurement error remains low across the full 24-item instrument.

9. Factor Analysis

To evaluate the structural integrity and dimensionality of the translated questionnaire, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted using structural equation modeling software, testing the empirical fit of the data collected from industrial personnel against the hypothesized theoretical 6-factor model originally formulated by Curcuruto et al. (2016).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Architecture

The structural model specified six first-order latent variables corresponding to the theoretical dimensions, each measured by their respective four reflective observed indicators (24 items total):

• Factor 1: Role Breadth Self-Efficacy ← Indicators A1, A2, A3, A4
• Factor 2: Control Perception ← Indicators A5, A6, A7, A8
• Factor 3: Psychological Ownership ← Indicators A9, A10, A11, A12
• Factor 4: Felt Responsibility ← Indicators A13, A14, A15, A16
• Factor 5: Anticipation Orientation ← Indicators A17, A18, A19, A20
• Factor 6: Improvement Orientation ← Indicators A21, A22, A23, A24

Model Fit Indices and Parameter Estimates

The maximum likelihood estimation method demonstrated that the hypothesized six-factor model achieved acceptable to good structural fit indices across the sample data, adhering to the standard psychometric thresholds formulated by Hu and Bentler (1999):

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Remained within the acceptable threshold of ≤ 3.0, indicating satisfactory baseline fit without excessive model strain.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): The comparative fit indices reached acceptable criteria (≥ 0.90), confirming that the six-factor configuration is superior to alternative unidimensional or orthogonal configurations.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): The RMSEA point estimate fell below the 0.08 cutoff value, confirming that the model approximated the empirical data covariance matrix with minimal approximation error.
• Standardized Factor Loadings: All standardized path coefficients from the latent factors to their corresponding observed indicators were statistically significant (p < 0.001), indicating strong construct saturation for each of the 24 items.

The confirmation of the six-factor architecture in an Iranian industrial sample confirms cross-cultural structural equivalence. This finding shows that proactive role orientation operates across similar psychological dimensions in both Western and Middle Eastern industrial environments.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational characteristics and administrative guidelines for the Proactive-Safety Role Orientation questionnaire are structured as follows:

• Instrument Designation: Proactive-Safety Role Orientation questionnaire (PRO-SAFE).
• Test Classification: Self-administered psychological assessment / Occupational health diagnostic survey.
• Target Population: Adult industrial personnel, manufacturing plant workers, technical operators, and safety personnel in high-risk workplaces.
• Total Item Count: 24 structured psychometric items.
• Response Architecture: 5-point Likert rating scale:
• 1 = Strongly Disagree
• 2 = Disagree
• 3 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
• 4 = Agree
• 5 = Strongly Agree
• Subscale Structural Breakdown:
• Role Breadth Self-Efficacy: Items A1 through A4 (Assessing self-efficacy in executing safety tasks outside formal boundaries).
• Control Perception: Items A5 through A8 (Evaluating perceived agency to alter and impact workplace safety processes).
• Psychological Ownership: Items A9 through A12 (Quantifying personal internal ownership over organizational safety).
• Felt Responsibility: Items A13 through A16 (Measuring moral obligation and willingness to intervene proactively).
• Anticipation Orientation: Items A17 through A20 (Gauging cognitive focus on prospective risk identification).
• Improvement Orientation: Items A21 through A24 (Measuring the drive to optimize procedures and surpass baseline standards).
• Scoring and Computational Procedures:
• Item responses are scored numerically from 1 to 5. There are no reverse-coded items reported in the primary validation model.
• Subscale scores are derived by calculating the arithmetic mean or summing the four items composing each specific dimension (subscale raw score ranges from 4 to 20; mean score ranges from 1.00 to 5.00).
• A composite global Proactive-Safety Role Orientation Index may be calculated by summing all 24 items (total score ranging from 24 to 120) or computing the overall mean across all indicators.
• Higher scores indicate higher proactive safety role orientation, indicative of an employee who actively anticipates hazards, feels personally accountable for work environment integrity, and initiates procedural improvements.
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The conceptual framework and initial instrument design of the proactive role-orientation towards workplace safety were developed by Curcuruto, Mearns, and Mariani in 2016. The cross-cultural adaptation, translation, and validation of the Persian instrument were completed in 2023 by Reza Jafari Nodoushan and colleagues at Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.

The academic research describing the validation study is published in BMC Psychology (Springer Nature) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). However, the complete, copyrighted operational questionnaire items remain the intellectual property of the original developers and localizing research teams. While academic researchers may read the validation article freely, researchers and organizational practitioners seeking to administer the complete, standardized item battery must contact the primary author or corresponding author (Mahdi Jafari Nodoushan at [email protected], or original author Maurizio Curcuruto) to obtain formal permission and request the unabridged instrument materials.

12. References

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13. Items of the Scale