Validation study of the safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) in public hospitals of Heilongjiang province, China.

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to validate the reliability and validity of the safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ) in Heilongjiang province, northern China.

METHODS: The SAQ was distributed to 27 public hospitals in five cities across Heilongjiang province. The Cronbach's α, item-dimension and dimension-dimension correlations were calculated. Descriptive analyses and confirmatory factor analysis were also performed.

RESULTS: The recovery rate of the questionnaire was 84.45%. The validity and reliability measures of the SAQ were acceptable. The goodness-of-fit index from the confirmatory factor analysis showed a reasonable model fit (CFI = 0.93, GFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.05). The Cronbach's α value for the scale was 0.91 and ranged from 0.66 to 0.91 for each of the scales. The SAQ showed good internal consistency reliability.

CONCLUSION: The SAQ had satisfactory psychometric properties and could be a useful tool to measure safety attitudes in public hospitals in Heilongjiang province in China.