FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine 
Civil Aerospace Medical Institute 

Report No: DOT/FAA/AM-23/13

Title and Subtitle: Safety Culture Assessment and Continuous Improvement in Aviation: A Literature Review

Report Date: May 2023

Authors: Key, K., Hu, P., Choi, I., Schroeder, D.

Abstract: The effectiveness of safety management depends on the organization having a positive safety culture, or the shared values, actions, and behaviors that demonstrate a commitment to safety over competing goals and demands. However, despite the recognized importance of safety culture, organizations may neither be equipped to establish the benefits of safety culture (e.g., clear linkages to safety outcomes), nor to develop assessment methods, nor to improve safety culture based information collected from the assessments. In support of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) efforts to promote a positive safety culture, we reviewed the literature on safety culture assessment and promotion. The literature reveals the development of a deeper understanding of safety culture, identifies a wide range of individual and organizational outcomes to include in assessments, provides interpretive theoretical frameworks, and summarizes preliminary investigations of intervention strategies.

Key Words: safety culture, organizational culture, assessment, human factors, aviation 

No. of Pages: 74