Background: There is widespread interest in measuring healthcare provider attitudes about issues relevant to patient safety (often called safety climate or safety culture). Here we report the psychometric properties, establish benchmarking data, and discuss emerging areas of research with the University of Texas Safety Attitudes Questionnaire.

Male (N = 248) and female (.# = 282) subjects were given the Personal Attributes Questionnaire consisting of SS bipolar attributes drawn from the Sex Role Stereotype Questionnaire by Rosenkrantz, Vogel, Bee, Broverman, and Broverman and were asked to rate themselves and then to compare directly the typical male and female college student. Self-ratings were divided into male-valued (stereotypically masculine attributes judged more desirable for both sexes), female-valued, and sex-specific items, Also administered was the Attitudes Toward Women Scale and a measure of social self-esteem. Correlations of the self-ratings with stereotype scores and the Attitudes Toward Women Scale were low in magnitude, suggesting that sex role expectations do not distort self-concepts. For both men and women, "femininity" on the female-valued self items and "masculinity" on the male-valued items were positively correlated, and both significantly related to self-esteem. The implications of the results for a concept of masculinity and femininity as a duality, characteristic of all individuals, and the use of the self-rating scales for measuring masculinity, femininity, and androgyny were discussed.

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Objectives: To survey operating theatre and intensive care unit staff about attitudes concerning error, stress, and teamwork and to compare these attitudes with those of airline cockpit crew. Design: Cross sectional surveys. Setting: Urban teaching and non-teaching hospitals in the United States, Israel, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Major airlines around the world. Participants: 1033 doctors, nurses, fellows, and residents working in operating theatres and intensive care units and over 30 000 cockpit crew members (captains, first officers, and second officers). Main outcome measures: Perceptions of error, stress, and teamwork. Results: Pilots were least likely to deny the effects of fatigue on performance (26% v 70% of consultant surgeons and 47% of consultant anaesthetists). Most pilots (97%) and intensive care staff (94%) rejected steep hierarchies (in which senior team members are not open to input from junior members), but only 55% of consultant surgeons rejected such hierarchies. High levels of teamwork with consultant surgeons were reported by 73% of surgical residents, 64% of consultant surgeons, 39% of anaesthesia consultants, 28% of surgical nurses, 25% of anaesthetic nurses, and 10% of anaesthetic residents. Only a third of staff reported that errors are handled appropriately at their hospital. A third of intensive care staff did not acknowledge that they make errors. Over half of intensive care staff reported that they find it difficult to discuss mistakes. Conclusions: Medical staff reported that error is important but difficult to discuss and not handled well in their hospital. Barriers to discussing error are more important since medical staff seem to deny the effect of stress and fatigue on performance. Further problems include differing perceptions of teamwork among team members and reluctance of senior theatre staff to accept input from junior members.

A short (25-item) version of the Spence-Helmreich (1972) Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) is presented. Correlations between scores on the short and the full (55-item) version for groups of male and female students and groups of their parents were .95 or above. The results of a factor analysis and part-whole correlations also indicated the similarity of the two forms . Normative data for the student and parent samples are described .The investigators have recently described (Spence & Helrnreich, 1972a) the development of a Likert-type scale containing statements about the rights and roles 'of women in such areas as vocat ional, educational, and intellectual activities; dating behavior and etiquette ; se x u aI behavior; and marital relationships. The instrument, which has been labeled the Attitudes toward Women Scale, or AWS, consists of 55 items, each of which has four response alternatives, ranging from agree strongly to disagree strongly . Each item is given a score from ato 3, with a representing the most traditional and 3 the most contemporary , profeminist response .In putting together the initial item pool , an attempt was made to include statements which described roles and behaviors in all major areas of activity in which normative expectations could be , in principle, the same for men and women. The distribution of responses to each AWS item is important because of information it gives on contemporary attitudes toward the particular issue addressed . For th is kind of descriptive purpose , it is desirable to have a lengthy scale which contains items covering all of the significant topics that are of interest.In common with other similar scales, a more frequent use of the AWS data involves obtaining a numerical index score for each individual in a given group (e.g.. Spence & Helmreich, 1972b). These scores presumably reflect the degree to which the individual holds traditional or liberal views, and permit comparisons of the attitudes of various groups on this dimension , pred ictions of other behaviors on the basis of the individual's attitude score, etc . For this latter purpose, it is convenient to have available a shorter version of the AWS, which is nonetheless highly correlated with the full test. A 25-item form , whose development will be described here, was therefore devised. (4) analysis was performed on the data from 241 female and 286 male students ill introductory psychology at The University of Texas at Austin , who were tested during the 197 1-72 academic year. For each sex separately , the Ss were first divided into quartiles on the basis of their total AWS scores . The distribution of choices of the four response alternatives in each quartile group for each item was then obtained, and a biserial and point biserial r calculated . The 25 items which, by inspection, had distributions which maximally discriminated among quartile for both sexes, and which had the highest biserial correlations were selected for the short version . SELECTION OF ITEMS