Tri-Factorial Structure of Safety-Related Internal Communication (SRIC) within an Air Navigation Service Provider Framework: Assessment of a Second-Order CFA Model in Portugal

Air navigation safety culture has been associated with organizational internal communication. The main objective of this study is to assess the hypothesized tri-dimensionality of Safety-Related Internal Communication (SRIC), in the context of High Reliability Organization’s (HRO) safety culture framework, as is the case of the Portuguese Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP). So, and through an extensive literature review, Team Communication (TC), Management Communication (MC) and Safety Self-Attitude (SSA), have been identified as forming the first-order factor structure of the underlying second-order SRIC dimension. To examine whether the implementation of a second-order CFA model for the factorial validity of SRIC is feasible, 207 valid answers have been obtained through the submission, from June 2013 to December 2013, of a questionnaire to the operational staff from three different aeronautical careers in a previously selected European ANSP. In a first stage, maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results confirmed that, the proposed first-order structure reflected three distinctive aspects of SRIC dimension and, in a second stage, that the higher-order SRIC structure had an adequate fit to the data. Findings also confirmed that all constructs had good psychometric properties of convergent and discriminant validity. Results were also confirmed through a cross validation procedure.