Psychological Unsafety in Schools: The Development and Validation of a Scale

Abstract

Work related psychological unsafety defined as the degree to which employee perceive the risky work environment that hinder them to behave comfortably or to speak up what they think without fear of its possible negative consequences. The importance of psychological unsafety has already been laid down for organizational viability and development, but the main problem is lack of instrument to measure psychological unsafety in schools. So the aim of this study is to develop valid and reliable instrument. We developed it in line with the procedures suggested by AERA (The American Educational Research Association). Based on the literature review, we wrote 27 draft items, then we piloted it on 164 school staff and we implemented factor and item analyses. We finally conducted it in the main application with 393 school staff who randomly selected from schools located in different geographical regions of Turkey. Results of EFA displayed that the 19 items loaded on three factors explaining .73 of total variance and the factor loadings ranged between .59 to .85. In addition, corrected item-total correlations ranged from .51 to .86. The internal consistency reliability coefficient was .96 and CFA confirmed the structural model. At the end of the study, we obtained a valid and reliable scale to measure psychological unsafety in schools.

Development and Validation of a Scale for Psychological Safety in School Among High School Students in India

“…The views of the participants were noted and an initial group consisting of 42 items were created for the study. A review of literature and a study of a scale developed by researchers like Yildirim and Yenipinar (2017) led to the elimination of 15 of the items, and a pool of 27 items were used in a pilot study involving a sample of 43 high school students chosen by convenience sampling. The pilot study indicated that six of the chosen items had low factor loadings, and they were eliminated.…”

“…Yildirim and Yenipinar (2017) developed and validated a scale for psychological ‘unsafety’ in Turkish schools. The main study involved a sample of 393 school students.…”

“…The researcher emphasizes that though a significant number of studies have been conducted on psychological safety—some of them with special emphasis on educational institutions—there are only a few important scales in the world, which are used to estimate psychological safety. The three main instruments that are frequently used are Edmondson’s (1999) team psychological safety scale, Baeva’s (2002) instrument ‘psychological safety of the educational environment’ and the Turkish scale for measuring ‘psychological unsafety’ in schools as developed by Yildirim and Yenipinar (2017). Each of the mentioned scales are important and suited to the environment that they represent.…”

“…The Turkish scale developed by Yildirim and Yenipinar (2017) is a very good attempt to study psychological ‘unsafety’ in schools with the help of a simple and lucid instrument. The items in the scale are specific, properly formed and can be comprehended by non-experts as well.…”