Estresse ocupacional e saúde mental: desempenho de instrumento de avaliação em população de trabalhadores na Bahia, Brasil.

Abstract

The assessment of the research instrument performance used in the occupational health is of fundamental importance in order to cautiously specify, the trustworthiness of the commonly found situations in work environments. The validation of an instrument has the purpose of verifying whether the mensuration carried out consistently measures what the instrument intends to measure.Nevertheless, to be regarded as a valid one, an instrument must also be reliable,which means that its reliability is required, yet it is not enough for its validity status.This current study of validation has been aimed for assessing the fulfillment of two questionnaires: the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ), and the Self Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20), which were used in the evaluation of labor psychosocial aspects and in the workers mental health respectively. The accomplished research has involved five studies which differed in selected occupations. The analysis was done in two stages; in the first, the evaluation of the SRQ-20 was carried out by examining the ROC curve, factor analysis of tetracoric correlations, multiple correspondence analysis, the internal consistency was evaluated by the formula of Kuder-Richardson (KD-20); in the second stage, the JCQ performance was assessed, in which it has been used statistical procedures such as factor analysis with the extraction method of main components and VARIMAX rotation and calculus of Cronbach s Alpha. The results showed satisfactory indicators of performance for both appraised instruments. The SRQ-20 evaluation revealed the extraction of four factors confirmed by the graphic of the analysis of multiple correspondences, the instrument showed reasonable internal consistency among the scales, the questionnaire performance was satisfactory since it identified symptoms and correctly classified subjects about the suspicion of usual mental disturbs. In general,the JCQ revealed adequacy of its scales to the theoretical model proposed by Karasek, acceptable internal consistency among scales. The good performance of the instruments evaluated in this study showed that these instruments satisfactorily assess what it is intended to be measured and can contribute towards building of indicators of occupational health and efficient policies for the working class.