Assessing safety culture in offshore environments - Industrial Centre

employed here for two reasons: (1) to elicit constructs based on individuals' notionsof `safety culture'; and (2) to provide initial indications of any di€erences in overallperceptions between di€erent work groups in the study organisations. The focusgroup studies were deemed to be particularly appropriate at this stage of the investigationssince the data collected would be utilised as the basis for the toolkit developmentand, in particular, the development of the questionnaire tool. Focus groupsas a method are well accepted (Krueger, 1994) but they can be biased by a numberof factors, e.g. domination of the group by one member or too much direction bythe facilitator. These biases were controlled for by the use of a small number ofgroup facilitators who followed a structured discussion format.2.1. MethodA series of focus group discussions (n=40) were conducted using both o€shoreand onshore personnel in three separate organisations, at a total of six di€erentlocations. These 40 discussion groups involved 375 employees in groups rangingbetween three and 12 individuals. One hundred and eighty-one participants workedin onshore locations and 194 were based on o€shore installations. Eighty-threemanagers and supervisors took part in the study. Wherever possible the groups werehomogenous and comprised either: (1) managers and supervisors; or (2) members ofthe workforce. This promoted an atmosphere of open enquiry and, wherever possible,avoided inhibiting the group members (Carroll, 1998).Each of the discussions involved four questions being put to the group participants,namely what they understood by the term safety, what they understood bythe term company culture, how safety ®ts into their picture of company culture andwhat they understood by the term safety culture. The ®rst three questions weredesigned to put participants at their ease and help focus their discussion of theconcept of safety culture. All members of the group were encouraged by the facilitatorto make a response to the ®nal question.Each of the focus group discussions were recorded on audiotape and then transcribedverbatim. These transcriptions were then subjected to a preliminary contentanalysis (Holsti, 1969; Dane, 1990) involving two independent raters, and theresulting keywords (based on the most commonly occurring constructs in the discussionsof the concept of safety culture) were tabulated. There was 96% agreementbetween raters on the classi®cation of concepts. Where the raters did not agree onthe categorisation of a concept (in 13 cases), a third rater arbitrated. In addition tothe extraction of individual key constructs, general group feelings and perceptions ofsafety were recorded as appropriate.2.2. ResultsS.J. Cox, A.J.T. Cheyne / Safety Science 34 (2000) 111±129 117All groups actively participated with a good degree of co-operation. The numberof occasions each concept was mentioned during the focus discussion groups isshown in Table 1, together with a breakdown by organisation. The numbers shownin brackets indicate the number of times each issue was raised in a negative sense.