Safety culture within the Australian coal mining industry: identifying the critical factors and measuring the construct

Coal mining has been internationally recognised as a high risk industry (HRI). Safety investigations within HRIs have revealed safety culture to be at the core of safety outcomes: both accident causation and error prevention. Safety culture investigations have not however, held a prominent role in safety management within Australian coal mines. The aim of the current research was to identify critical safety issues within Australian coal mines in order to develop and test an industry appropriate measure of safety culture to determine a baseline from which to direct safety management strategies. The thesis presents a multi-phased research project based on a review of the role and measurement of safety culture within HRIs. Review of the literature produced a model of the factors underlying safety culture within HRIs. Focus groups were subsequently conducted across 3 coal mines (N = 69) from NSW, Australia to examine the critical factors underlying safety culture and safety outcomes within the industry. The findings upheld the model derived from the literature while identifying several context-specific safety issues. An existing measure of safety culture, the Safety Management Questionnaire (SMQ: Fleming, 2000), was selected for re-development for the current research due to a high level of similarity in the underlying components. The Australian Coal Safety Questionnaire (ACSQ) was subsequently developed across three studies. The first iteration of the ACSQ (ACSQ-1) was tested across 3 coal mines (N = 152), the ACSQ-2 across 5 coal mines (N = 363), and the ACSQ-3 examined across 12 coal mines (N = 679). Factor analysis revealed a 5-factor model of the issues underlying safety culture in Australian coal mines. The management of safety was identified as the principal factor. A baseline of safety culture for the Australian coal mining industry was determined to be 80.60%: a moderately strong level of safety culture. The current research provides the Australian coal mining industry with increased knowledge of the critical safety issues, a baseline level of safety culture, and a psychometric tool from which to pursue management strategies to further enhance the safety culture and safety outcomes of the industry.