Research about socially constructed phenomenon in the workplace: The value of open-ended questions

Purpose.The goal is to investigate if the results found by Poncheri, Lindberg, Thompson, & Surface (2008) can be extended on a different construct in which individual perception is built on the interactions between the members of the same workgroup. Methodology. This survey involved 24 Italian heavy industries in the Veneto region, along two years. Our sample consisted of 1852 blue-collar workers (response rate 84%). The most part of whom (89.1%) were men. The questionnaire included two scales with closed-ended items measuring Safety Climate, and two open ended questions concerning workers’ comments on the same topics. Safety Climate. The Integrated Organizational Safety Climate Questionnaire developed by Brondino, Pasini, and Silva (2013) was used to assess Safety Climate. We use only two scales (Supervisor's Safety Climate – SSC; and Co-workers' Safety Climate - CSC); Results. Results confirmed our first hypothesis, i.e. that negative comments are more frequent than neutral or positive ones, for both SSC and CSC scales. Negative comments were also longer, but only for the CSC scale and not for the SSC scale. The third hypothesis, that is a positive correlation between tone and safety climate level, was also confirmed. Finally, also the last hypothesis was confirmed: workers who made comments perceived a lower level of safety climate compared with workers who did not make any comment. Limitations. Our findings may suffer from limitations related to the nature of self-report data. Research/Practical Implications. Researchers’ awareness of the bias that could affect open-ended questions leads to some important practical implications.