Psychological Safety Inventory (PSI)
A 30-item measure of psychological safety in workplace teams.
The Psychological Safety Inventory (PSI) was developed to provide a broader measure of workplace psychological safety. It assesses whether people feel safe taking interpersonal risks, as well as the trust, organizational support, security and leadership conditions that shape how people experience their team.
Why we developed the PSI
Psychological safety is important for how people communicate, learn and work together. But when we began this work, there was no clear consensus on how psychological safety should be measured in workplace settings.
Existing measures varied in what they captured, and evidence for their reliability and validity was limited in some cases. Psychological safety was also often assessed primarily in terms of interpersonal risk-taking — whether someone feels safe speaking up, asking for help, seeking feedback or admitting a mistake.
We developed the PSI to assess a broader set of conditions that contribute to psychological safety: how people experience their team, the support available within the organization, their sense of security and importance within the team, and the behaviour of leaders.
How the PSI was developed
A preliminary 70-item version of the PSI was evaluated with 497 employees in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were then used to develop the final 30-item, five-factor measure.
The final PSI and its subscales demonstrated high reliability and showed the expected relationships with other measures of psychological safety, leadership, team climate, organizational perceptions and organizational support.
Read the development and validation paper ↗What the PSI measures
The PSI assesses five aspects of how people experience psychological safety within their team and organization.
Interpersonal Risk-Taking
Confidence that it is safe to speak up, ask for help, seek feedback, raise concerns and take other interpersonal risks within the team.
Mutual Trust and Respect
The extent to which team members trust one another, feel respected and included, care about one another and value different perspectives.
Organizational and Structural Support
Whether people perceive that useful policies, services, information and resources are available to support them and their work.
Identity and Clarity in the Team
A person's sense of importance, security, stability and clarity about their place and future within the team.
Supportive Leadership
Perceptions that leaders provide honest and effective guidance, support development, encourage inclusion and respond to problems.
Together, the five domains capture interpersonal, team, organizational and leadership conditions associated with psychological safety.
Download the PSI
The PSI questionnaire and its administration and scoring instructions are available for direct download.
Download coming soon — get in touch for a copy.
Download coming soon — get in touch for a copy.
Scoring the PSI
Each of the 30 PSI items is rated from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The total Psychological Safety score is calculated as the mean across all 30 items. Subscale scores are calculated as the mean of the items within each domain.
| Domain | Items |
|---|---|
| Interpersonal Risk-Taking | 1–5 |
| Mutual Trust and Respect | 6–12 |
| Organizational and Structural Support | 13–18 |
| Identity and Clarity in Context of Team | 19–24 |
| Supportive Leadership | 25–30 |
Total and subscale scores range from 1 to 5. Higher scores indicate higher levels of psychological safety.
Development and validation
The PSI was developed as a comprehensive self-report measure of psychological safety for workplace settings.
The preliminary measure was evaluated with 497 employees from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Exploratory factor analysis was used to reduce the item set, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the resulting structure in a separate portion of the sample.
The final 30-item PSI comprises five related domains. The total scale and subscales demonstrated high reliability and correlated as expected with measures of psychological safety, leadership, team climate, organizational perceptions and organizational support.
Read the validation paper ↗Citing the PSI
When using the PSI, cite the original development and validation study.
Plouffe, R. A., Ein, N., Liu, J. J. W., St. Cyr, K., Baker, C., Nazarov, A., & Richardson, J. D. (2023). Feeling safe at work: Development and validation of the Psychological Safety Inventory. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 31, 443–455. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12434
PSI development team
The Psychological Safety Inventory was developed by researchers at the MacDonald Franklin OSI Research Centre and collaborators.
- Rachel A. Plouffe
- Natalie Ein
- Jenny J. W. Liu
- Kate St. Cyr
- Clara Baker
- Anthony Nazarov
- J. Don Richardson
Related
Questions about the PSI?
For questions about using the PSI or studying the measure in new settings, get in touch with our team.