Methodological issues in measuring psychosocial safety climate: a systematic review protocol

Abstract

Introduction This systematic review aims to highlight the methodological inconsistencies in studying psychosocial safety climate (PSC). Highlighting the diverse dimensions and implications of PSC, this review seeks to enhance the replicability and comparability of studies, contributing to the development of standardised measurement techniques for the construct.Methods and analysis The methodology encompasses a comprehensive search strategy in PubMed Central, Web of Science, Scopus, JSTOR, Embase, Science Direct, ProQuest, Google and Google Scholar from 28 January 2024 to 30 September 2024. A team of trained reviewers, under the guidance of the authors, will scrutinise eligible studies for inclusion based on predefined criteria. This will ensure a diverse yet focused selection of articles aligned with the research objectives. Robust data extraction and appraisal processes will be followed. Adopting a qualitative synthesis approach, the review aims to generate descriptive and analytical themes, uncovering nuanced dimensions of PSC beyond individual study findings. The protocol emphasises consultation with domain experts and a chartered librarian to refine research questions and optimise search strategies for selecting very relevant articles for the review. We will adopt qualitative data synthesis in summarising and presenting the results and findings for our review of PSC methodological issues.Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval is not needed for this systematic review because the data for this review will be extracted from already published journal articles. The protocol for this review has been registered in the Open Science Framework. This review and its findings will be published in an academic journal and or presented at scientific conferences.Trial registration number OSF registration: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/3UZC2.