Affiliations: [a] Occupational Safety and Health Care, Region Jönköping County, Sweden
| [b] Samrehab, Värnamo Hospital, Region Jönköping County, Sweden
| [c] Jönköping Academy for Improvement of Health and Welfare, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Important success factors for the Occupational Health Service (OHS) include services being based on active participation and risk identification from a multidisciplinary/multifactorial perspective. Despite an extensive search, no questionnaire with this approach was found so a new questionnaire was developed at the OHS. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the new questionnaire named Structured Multidisciplinary work Evaluation Tool (SMET) through action research. METHOD: Communicative and pragmatic validity were tested through the development of the questionnaire using action theory and presented in a descriptive portrayal. The Content Validity Index (CVI) was used to test content validity for each item as well as for the questionnaire as a whole. RESULT: Communicative and pragmatic validity were developed and tested over time in four different periods between 2008 and 2014, in 24 clinics (with a total of approximately 1000 employees) in Region Jönköping County. The content validity of the SMET questionnaire as a whole was close to excellent and the validity of the questions regarding physically and psychosocially demanding work factors were found to be excellent. The questions regarding environmentally demanding work factors were found to have a lower, but still good, validity. CONCLUSION: The SMET questionnaire has very good content validity. The pervasive work with the SMET questionnaire also shows good pragmatic and communicative validity.
Keywords: Occupational health care, work questionnaire, validity, participatory
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