Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey

Abstract

The Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey is a validated 24-item instrument designed to assess critical dynamics within work teams. Its core purpose is to quantify psychological safety, which reflects the team’s perception of the social climate regarding interpersonal risk-taking. Furthermore, the survey measures both internal and external team learning behaviors, encompassing activities related to monitoring progress, testing assumptions, seeking external information, and obtaining feedback from organizational stakeholders or customers. Finally, it captures team learning outcomes, specifically focusing on the educational benefits accrued by individual members through their team experience.

Keywords

Psychological safety, team learning, organizational behavior, team dynamics, work teams, interpersonal risk, single-loop learning, double-loop learning, Edmondson.

Authors

Amy Edmondson.

Purpose

The primary purpose of this instrument is to provide a robust, multi-dimensional assessment of crucial elements necessary for high-functioning teams: psychological safety and proactive team learning behavior. By measuring these two constructs concurrently, researchers and practitioners can diagnose the underlying cultural factors that either enable or inhibit effective team performance and innovation.

Specifically, the survey allows for the differentiation of learning modes, capturing both behaviors focused on internal process improvement (internal learning) and those geared towards environmental adaptation and feedback acquisition (external learning). The inclusion of learning outcomes ensures that the impact of these behaviors and the safe climate is quantifiable in terms of individual member development and new organizational procedures.

Construct

The survey is structured around three primary constructs, derived from the foundational work of Amy Edmondson on organizational learning and team dynamics. These constructs are measured across the 24 items:

• Team Psychological Safety: This construct captures the shared belief among team members that the team environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, such as admitting mistakes, asking questions, or offering dissenting opinions without fear of humiliation or punishment. It measures the willingness to trust colleagues and view the social climate as conducive to interpersonal risk.
• Internal Team Learning Behaviors (TLBI): These behaviors involve the team’s capacity for internal reflection and improvement. This includes both single-loop learning (monitoring progress against goals) and double-loop learning (testing underlying assumptions and generating new possibilities or approaches).
• External Team Learning Behaviors (TLBE): This dimension assesses the team’s proactive engagement with the external environment, including other organizational units or customers. It measures the extent to which the team seeks information, feedback, and coordinates efforts to meet broader organizational objectives.
• Team Learning Outcomes (TLO): While sometimes treated as an outcome variable, this component specifically measures the perceived learning benefits accrued by individual team members as a direct result of collaborating within the team structure.

Validity

The psychometrics of the Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey have been rigorously established in the initial development research published by Edmondson (1999). This foundational work confirmed the measure’s validity, demonstrating that the instrument accurately captures the intended theoretical constructs of psychological safety and distinct learning behaviors.

Specifically, established validity includes evidence of construct validity, showing that the subscales correlate appropriately with related organizational variables, and discriminant validity, confirming that the subscales are distinct from each other, thus supporting the multi-dimensional nature of the team learning climate model.

Reliability

The initial validation study confirmed the reliability of the scale, ensuring consistent measurement across the items for each subscale. High internal consistency, typically measured using coefficient alpha, was established for the psychological safety subscale and the various team learning behavior subscales (Edmondson, 1999). This reliability ensures that the measure provides stable and dependable scores, making it suitable for both research applications and organizational diagnostic purposes.

Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the measure was established during the initial development phase, confirming that the 24 items load onto the hypothesized latent factors: psychological safety, internal team learning behavior, external team learning behavior, and team learning outcomes. This structural validation supports the theoretical model proposed by the author, reinforcing the scale’s utility in separating the climate (safety) from the resulting actions (learning behaviors) and their effects (learning outcomes).

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report survey / Psychometric scale

Format: 24 Likert-style items across multiple subscales.

Language Available: English (Original); widely used and translated in organizational research.

Population Group: Work team members / Organizational employees.

Age Group: Adult (Working professionals).

Population Details: Individuals who are actively participating members of a defined work team within an organizational setting, often studied in high-stakes environments or complex knowledge-work contexts.

Test Methodology: Quantitative assessment of team climate and behavioral patterns, typically administered via paper-and-pencil or digital formats. Responses often utilize a Likert-type scale to assess frequency or level of agreement.

Keywords

Organizational psychology, team effectiveness, feedback seeking, risk-taking, workplace culture, Amy Edmondson, learning climate, group cognition.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A

Correspondence Address: N/A

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1999 (Based on key publication).

Permissions and Fees: The scale is widely used in academic research. For non-commercial academic purposes, the scale is often utilized freely. Permission for commercial or large-scale organizational use typically requires contact with the author or associated academic institutions, such as Harvard Business School.

Reference’s

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 350-383.

Items of the Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Psychological Safety

represents the extent to which the team views the social climate as conducive to interpersonal risk; it is a measure of people’s willingness to trust others not to attempt to gain personal advantage at their expense.

• 1- When someone makes a mistake in this team, it is often held against him or her (R).
• 1- In this team, it is easy to discuss difficult issues and problems.
• 1- In this team, people are sometimes rejected for being different (R).
• 1- It is completely safe to take a risk on this team.
• 1- It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help (R).
• 1- Members of this team value and respect each others’ contributions.

TEAM LEARNING BEHAVIOR

Team learning behaviors (internal): TLBI

represents the extent to which team members engage in behaviors designed to monitor progress and performance against goals (single-loop TL), as well as the extent to which they engage in behaviors designed to test assumptions and create new possibilities (double-loop TL)

• 3- Problems and errors in this team are always communicated to the appropriate people (whether team members or others) so that action can be taken.
• 3- We often take time to figure out ways to improve our team’s work processes.
• 3- In this team, people talk about mistakes and ways to prevent and learn from them.
• 3- This team tends to handle conflicts and differences of opinion privately or off-line, rather than addressing them directly as a group (R).
• 3- This team frequently obtains new information that leads us to make important changes in our plans or work processes.
• 3- Members of this team often raise concerns they have about team plans or decisions.
• 3- This team constantly encounters unexpected hurdles and gets stuck (R).
• 3- We try to discover assumptions or basic beliefs about issues under discussion. (D&M modifed)

Team learning behaviors (external): TLBE

represents the extent to which team members engage in behaviors designed to obtain information and feedback from others in the organization or from customers.

• 3- People in this team frequently coordinate with other teams to meet organization objectives.
• 3- People in this team cooperate effectively with other teams or shifts to meet corporate objectives or satisfy customer needs.
• 3- This team is not very good at keeping everyone informed who needs to buy in to what the team is planning and accomplishing. (R)
• 3- This team goes out and gets all the information it possibly can from a lot of different sources.
• 3- We don’t have time to communicate information about our team’s work to others outside the team. (R)
• 3- We invite people from outside the team to present information or have discussions with us. (D&M)

WORK TEAM OUTCOMES

Team learning outcomes (items suggested by qualitative research) (TLO)

represents extent of learning benefits for individual team members as a result of working on this team.

• 3- Members of this team help others understand their special areas of expertise.
• 3- Working with this team, I have gained a significant understanding of other areas of expertise.
• 3- The outcomes or products of our work include new processes or procedures (D&M)