Feeling safe at work: Development and validation of the Psychological Safety Inventory

• Published in: International journal of selection and assessment 2023-09, Vol.31 (3), p.443-455
• Main Authors: Plouffe, Rachel A., Ein, Natalie, Liu, Jenny J. W., St. Cyr, Kate, Baker, Clara, Nazarov, Anthony, Don Richardson, J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Psychological safety; psychometrics; scale validation; teams; workplace
• ISSN: 0965-075X; 1468-2389
• DOI: 10.1111/ijsa.12434

Psychological safety, defined as perceptions that an individual within a team is supported and feels safe to take interpersonal risks, voice opinions, and share ideas, is vital for organizational effectiveness. However, there is no consensus on how workplace psychological safety should be measured. We developed the Psychological Safety Inventory (PSI) in response to organizational needs to accurately assess psychological safety. A 70‐item version of the PSI was administered to 497 employees from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Based on factor analytic findings, we reduced the preliminary PSI to a 30‐item, five‐factor scale. The PSI showed high reliability and correlated as anticipated with convergent measures. Overall, the PSI is a valid and reliable measure of workplace psychological safety. Practitioner points Feeling psychologically safe, whether at an individual or organizational level, is vital for organizational effectiveness. However, there is no consensus on how psychological safety should be measured in an occupational setting. Given this lack of consensus and limited reliability and validity information for available measures, there is a need for the development of a comprehensive psychological safety scale. We developed a comprehensive self‐report measure of psychological safety for use in workplace contexts titled the Psychological Safety Inventory (PSI). Based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, we reduced the preliminary PSI to a 30‐item, five‐factor scale. The PSI subscales and total scale showed high reliability and correlated as anticipated with other measures of psychological safety, leadership, team climate, organizational perceptions, and organizational support. Our research can be used to inform organizational practices, such that leaders can assess their teams' levels of psychological safety to evaluate areas of need within the workplace context.