Premier, Social Sciences Citation Index, Web of Science, JSTOR and
Primo Central Index.
The initial broad search included studies relating to patient
safety, environmental safety, chemical and nuclear safety, financial
risk and consumer safety. On the basis of titles, the articles that did
not pertain to occupational safety management, or duplicates were
removed. Also, those that examined road safety issues in a general
or public health context were excluded. Only articles that were
published in English were selected. A total of 532 references remained
after this cull.
The abstracts of these remaining references were then reviewed
based on three criteria. The first criterion was whether the paper
included the identification of specific measures that might predict
safety outcomes. Secondly, an assessment of transferability to
safety management in the heavy vehicle transport sector was
made. Finally, those studies that developed but did not empirically
test safety climate scales were excluded.
In addition, the original scientific study literature that was included
in relevant systematic reviews (Flin et al., 2000; Grayson
and Helman, 2011; Guldenmund, 2000; Murray et al., 2009) was
obtained for first-hand examination. Any new articles found therein
were also subjected to the same three criteria.
After a review of the abstracts for the papers that met the criteria
a total of 124 papers were reviewed by the project team. These
were categorised as those that examined observable characteristics
of management and those that studied subjective characteristics
(safety climate surveys). There were 81 papers classed as empirical
safety management studies and 43 classed as empirical safety climate
studies. The authors assessed this list for whether or not
there was statistical evidence (with p-values of