Safety culture and its contributing factor in education sector in Malaysia

Abstract

The importance of safety culture has been the focus of research attention in many sectors in Malaysia for many years in order to achieve a positive safety environment at a workplace. However, the safety culture among teachers in education sector has rarely been examined especially in school. Four factors were focused in this study; safety policies, safety procedures, safety training and safety committee as factors that leads to safety culture in school. Self-administered questionnaires that included a demographic and the factors focused in this research were used to collect data from 111 schools in Kelantan, which is one of the states in Malaysia. The number of returned valid questionnaires was 408. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with Amos 19 was used to analyze the data. The measurement model shows that the four factors of situational dimensions lead to the safety culture among teachers in school. The results of the analysis indicated that safety policy, safety training and the safety committee would do well to increase the safety culture in education sector.