Maturity models and safety culture: A critical review

The available evidence suggests that maturity models are a popular means of assessing safety culture in organisations. The aim of the present study was to review their conceptual underpinnings and roots, as well as provide details of how they have been used to assess safety culture (e.g., types of methods used, coverage of safety domains). A total of 41 publications were reviewed based on a set of selection criteria (e.g., studies which explicitly reported data or a case study which used a maturity model). The findings indicate steady growth in the use of maturity models to assess safety culture particularly within domains such as construction, the oil and gas industries and healthcare. We also found that most studies focus on providing a descriptive account of safety culture using maturity models and make limited attempts to assess the reliability/validity of outcomes from their use. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of maturity models in the light of our findings, alongside identifying a number of new directions for future work of relevance to safety researchers and practitioners (e.g., the need for more detailed case studies of the use of maturity models to assess safety, as well as more attention to the underlying theory guiding use of maturity models)

Four studies, two methods, one accident – an examination of the reliability and validity of Accimap and STAMP for accident analysis

The validity and reliability of human factors and safety science methods are some of the important criteria for judging their appropriateness and utility for accident analysis, however these are rarely assessed. The aim of this study is to take a closer look at the validity and reliability of two systemic accident analysis methods (Accimap and STAMP) by comparing the results of four studies which analysed the same accident (the South Korea Sewol Ferry accident) using two methods. Studies 1 and 2 used Accimap whilst Studies 3 and 4 applied STAMP. The four studies were compared in terms of analysis procedure taken, level of detail, causal factors identified, and the recommendations for improvements suggested by the methods. The results of the causal factor comparison indicate that the reliability (degree of overlap of causal factors identified from the same method, i.e. inter-analyst overlap) of STAMP (65%) is higher than Accimap (38%). The validity (degree of overlap of causal factors identified from two different methods) is as low as 8%. The comparison of recommendations indicates that STAMP-based analyses produce a wider range of recommendations across multiple system levels while Accimap-based analyses tend to focus on whole system-related recommendations. These findings suggest that the use of a more structured method like STAMP can help produce a more reliable accident analysis results

Four studies, two methods and one accident – another look at the reliability and validity of STAMP and Accimap for systemic accident analysis

The aim of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of two accident analysis methods. We identified four studies which analysed the same accident (the South Korea Sewol Ferry accident). Studies 1 and 2 used Accimap whilst Studies 3 and 4 applied STAMP. The four studies were compared in terms of analysis procedure taken, granularity of analysis, causal factors identified and recommendations suggested. The results indicate that the reliability between two STAMP studies (61%) is higher than two Accimap studies (31%) in terms of contributing factor identification. It was found that the recommendations made from each study reflect the focus and knowledge of the analyst