ERROR MANAGEMENT CULTURE SCALE: TRANSLATION AND VALIDITY OF A BRAZILIAN VERSION

ABSTRACT Purpose: To provide evidence of the validity of a Brazilian Portuguese version of the Error Management Culture Scale. Originality/value: Errors are pervasive and cannot be entirely prevented, so it is essential to manage them so as to avoid the worst negative consequences. Error management culture is a set of organizational practices related to communicating about errors, sharing error knowledge, helping in error situations and detecting and handling errors quickly. There was no Brazilian questionnaire for measuring this concept, despite the importance of understanding how we learn from mistakes. Design/methodology/approach: The Brazilian Error Management Culture Scale was obtained by translation and back-translation procedures. An online and pencil and paper survey were conducted. A sample of 233 employees responded to the 17 items of the scale using five-point scales. Data on demographic and professional variables were also collected. Findings: Exploratory factor analysis and parallel analysis indicated a one-factor structure, but it can also be represented in terms of four facets of error management. The factor loadings ranged from 0.35 to 0.82 and Cronbach’s reliability coefficient was 0.94, which is consistent with the original study and with other studies using the scale. The results suggested the Brazilian scale will be useful in research and diagnosis. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings in different samples and its predictive validity should be tested to extend the evidence.