Evaluating demographic item relationships with survey responses on the Maintenance Climate Assessment Survey (MCAS)

Abstract

The Maintenance Climate Assessment Survey (MCAS) was developed to proactively assess factors that contribute to a high reliability organization and strong safety climate. The 3rd Marine Air Wing (MAW), which was seeking to proactively improve its safety posture requested the assistance of the School of Aviation Safety at the Naval Postgraduate School to examine its safety climate. Previous studies of the MCAS instrument have focused on the items and their relationship to the HRO based model of safety effectiveness components: process auditing, reward system, quality assurance, risk management, command and control, and communication/functional relationships. The present effort is the first attempt to consider the relationship between item component responses and demographic item responses. It evaluates 893 maintainer responds to the MCAS from 3rd MAW and looks for measurable effects due to demographics. This study finds that the regression models constructed using the demographics as explanatory variables have very little utility in predicting scores for the components. This result allows planners the relief of using the demographics as a low priority issue