Safety Climate Surveys, Maturity Models, and Triangulated Safety Culture Assessment: A Scoping Review of Diagnostic Methodologies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewed study addresses an important research problem involving the analysis of global scientific achievements in the area of ​​safety culture and safety climate. These are key categories for shaping the long-term safety of businesses and individuals. The study attempts to classify scientific achievements using psychometric, triangulation, and multi-criteria approaches. The study clearly describes the research methodology. In the reviewer's opinion, the authors achieved the intended research goals. The article is characterized by high cognitive value.

 

Reviewer's comments:

- the description of the research methodology contains repetitions;

- it is recommended to clarify the conclusions drawn from the content analysis of the reviewed publications, which would enhance the value of the reviewed study;

- it is recommended to reconsider the inclusion of Table 5 in the study.

 

The study is suitable for publication after minor corrections.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript addresses a relevant topic for Safety and offers a potentially useful classification of safety culture assessment methodologies into psychometric, multi-criteria, and triangulated approaches. The comparative tables are informative, and the discussion appropriately highlights limitations related to self-reported perceptions, formal compliance, cross-cultural transferability, and the weak connection between safety culture scores and operational safety outcomes. Nevertheless, several issues should be addressed to strengthen the scientific contribution and methodological transparency of the review.

1. The manuscript should state a clear primary research question and explain more explicitly how the review advances previous literature on safety culture and safety climate assessment.
2. The authors should clarify whether the study is more appropriately framed as a systematic review or a scoping review, considering that its main purpose is to map and classify a heterogeneous methodological field.
3. The complete search strategies for Scopus, Web of Science, and Dimensions should be reported, including field codes, filters, exact search dates, and the number of records retrieved from each database. The current keyword table does not ensure full reproducibility.
4. The rationale for limiting the search to 2016–2025, English-language journal articles, and studies containing “safety culture” or “safety climate” in the title should be strengthened. These restrictions may have excluded relevant instruments, maturity models, and foundational studies.
5. The consistency of the eligibility criteria should be verified. In particular, the inclusion of a paper published in Transportation Research Procedia should be reconciled with the stated restriction to journal articles. The distinction between excluded patient-safety studies and included occupational studies conducted in healthcare settings should also be clarified.
6. The procedure used to derive the three methodological categories should be described in greater detail. The authors should provide operational definitions, explain how hybrid studies were classified, and report whether categorization was conducted independently by more than one reviewer.
7. The application of MMAT to highly heterogeneous study designs requires further justification. The appraisal should remain criterion-based and should not be interpreted as an overall quality score. Study-level explanations for “yes”, “no”, and “can’t tell” judgments would improve transparency.
8. Claims of a clear methodological evolution toward triangulated assessment should be moderated unless supported by a formal temporal analysis. The current evidence primarily demonstrates the coexistence of different methodological families rather than a linear progression or the general superiority of one approach.
9. The description of Corrigan et al. in the narrative appears inconsistent with Table 4 and the cited reference. This discrepancy should be corrected, and all extracted information should be checked systematically against the original publications.
10. The practical contribution could be strengthened through a final decision matrix comparing the three methodological families according to assessment purpose, evidence sources, construct coverage, validation requirements, resource demands, limitations, and linkage with operational safety indicators.

The manuscript has clear potential, but substantial revision is needed to improve the definition of the research question, the reproducibility of the review process, the transparency of the methodological classification, and the strength of the conclusions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My colleagues address an important and timely topic by systematically reviewing the methodological approaches used to assess safety culture, safety climate, and safety culture maturity across occupational and organizational settings. Given the increasing recognition of safety culture as a key determinant of organizational performance and sustainable development, their review tackles a highly relevant scientific question. The manuscript is generally well organized, follows a logical structure, and demonstrates solid knowledge of the multidisciplinary literature. I particularly appreciated their effort to move beyond traditional safety climate questionnaires by incorporating maturity models, multi-criteria decision-making approaches, and triangulation strategies. This broader perspective is one of the principal strengths of the work.

The review methodology is transparent and follows the PRISMA guidelines. The study selection process, inclusion/exclusion criteria, quality appraisal using the MMAT, and the comparative summary tables provide a clear overview of the literature. Overall, I find that the manuscript is carefully prepared and has the potential to become a useful reference.

Despite these strengths, I believe that several conceptual, analytical, and methodological issues deserve further attention.

My principal concern relates to the conceptual scope and classification strategy. The eligibility criteria simultaneously include “methodology, instrument, model, framework, or diagnostic approach.” While this breadth enriches the review, it also combines elements operating at different epistemological levels (e.g., questionnaires as data collection tools, maturity models as frameworks, AHP/fuzzy logic as analytical methods, and triangulation as a research strategy). The authors discuss these under the common umbrella of “assessment methodologies” without fully articulating the rationale for this grouping. I believe that a clearer conceptual clarification would strengthen the coherence of the review.

A second important issue is the relatively small number of included studies (n=25) despite a broad search across three major databases. This limited yield, combined with the strong sectoral and geographical heterogeneity of the studies (construction, energy, healthcare, aviation, etc.), significantly restricts the generalizability and comparability of the findings. The colleagues do not sufficiently discuss how this heterogeneity affects the synthesis or the transferability of the identified approaches across contexts.

A third issue concerns the synthesis of the evidence. The authors provide detailed descriptions of the included studies and useful comparative tables. However, several higher-level conclusions would benefit from more transparent links to the empirical evidence. For example, statements such as “the findings underscore the lack of consolidated methodological standards” and “Current research demonstrates a transition from perception-based diagnostics toward triangulated frameworks” are plausible, but the manuscript does not always show explicitly how these overarching observations derive from the 25 included studies. Greater transparency in the synthesis process would improve the credibility of these claims.

My forth observation concerns the Discussion section. While thoughtful and intellectually engaging, the manuscript occasionally moves from descriptive summary of the reviewed evidence to broader conceptual interpretations without clearly signaling the transition. For instance, the critical reflection that “it is questionable to what extent methodological refinement has translated into genuine conceptual innovation” is interesting, but it appears to be the authors’ own interpretation rather than a direct conclusion emerging strictly from the data. Such reflections enrich the paper but would be stronger if presented more explicitly as theoretical implications.

Finally, I believe the manuscript misses an excellent opportunity for a stronger conceptual contribution. One of its most convincing conclusions is that “no isolated methodological approach is sufficient to fully capture the multidimensional nature of safety culture.” This point is well supported throughout the review. For this reason, I was expecting the authors to conclude by proposing an integrative conceptual framework (perhaps as a figure) illustrating how psychometric instruments, maturity models, multi-criteria approaches, and triangulation strategies could complement one another in a comprehensive safety culture assessment process. Such a synthesis would significantly increase the originality and practical value of the manuscript.

Overall, I consider this to be a carefully conducted systematic review that addresses a genuine gap in the safety culture literature. The main issues concern conceptual clarity, transparency of evidence synthesis, the implications of the small number of included studies and their heterogeneity, and the potential for a stronger integrative contribution. Addressing these points would markedly improve the scientific rigor and impact of the paper in a high-impact journal as Safety.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I accept the corrections made; the work is suitable for publication.

Author Response

We sincerely thank you for reviewing the previous version of our manuscript and for your valuable contribution to our work.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have substantially improved the manuscript and have satisfactorily addressed most of the concerns raised during the first review round. In particular, the paper is now consistently framed as a scoping review, the research question has been explicitly formulated, the complete database-specific search strings have been reported, the construction of the methodological typologies has been clarified, and the discussion has been significantly strengthened. The previous inconsistency in the description of Corrigan et al. has also been corrected.

A limited number of issues still require attention. First, the restrictions to English-language publications, the 2016–2025 period, and records containing “safety culture” or “safety climate” in the title should be explicitly justified. Their potential consequences for evidence coverage and selection bias should also be acknowledged in the limitations. Second, the manuscript should position its contribution more explicitly in relation to previous reviews and clarify what novel knowledge is produced by the proposed three-family classification. Third, the authors should clarify whether the qualitative and quantitative components of the mixed-methods studies were appraised using the relevant MMAT categories in addition to the Category 5 integration criteria, and explain how the appraisal findings informed the synthesis. Providing the data-charting form, classification matrix, and full-text exclusion list as supplementary materials would further strengthen reproducibility. Finally, causal or conclusive expressions such as “proved” and “predict” should be moderated when reporting findings from cross-sectional or observational studies, and the manuscript and reference list should undergo a final editorial review.

Subject to these focused revisions, the manuscript appears suitable for publication.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript is generally understandable and the quality of English has improved. However, a final professional language revision is still recommended to correct awkward constructions, occasional grammatical inconsistencies, and overly assertive wording. Examples include expressions such as “multidimensional dimensions,” the incomplete sentence beginning “Boskeljon-Horst et al. [35] In a study…,” and repeated use of terms such as “proved” or “predict” where more cautious formulations would be preferable. The reference list should also be checked for formatting inconsistencies and residual software-generated text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

none

Author Response

We sincerely thank you for reviewing the previous version of our manuscript and for your valuable contribution to our work.