Validity and reliability of a questionnaire for assessment of fatigue, health and social well-being in suburban bus drivers

Health, fatigue, and social well-being in suburban bus drivers are the most important factors of their function and frequency of car accidents and any disorder in this regard could lead to unpleasant outcomes for passengers and other people of society. Therefore, developing an instrument capable of identifying and expressing effective factors on this occupation well seems necessary. The present study was conducted to validate a questionnaire of fatigue, health, and social well-being in bus drivers.
This cross-sectional study was conducted on 285 suburban bus drivers in Soffeh and Kaveh bus terminals of Isfahan, Iran. Simple random sampling was done. After the questionnaire was translated, its validity was assessed by a panel of experts, calculation of content validity ratio (CVR), content validity index (CVI), and exploratory factor analysis. The questionnaire’s reliability was assessed by test-retest and internal consistency and for this purpose, respectively; internal consistency coefficient (ICC) and Cronbach’s alpha were used. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS software.
In determining face validity, occupation control was deleted. Also, organizational support was deleted from organizational factors and assessed independently as “Employer’s support”. Mean CVI of the questionnaire was obtained 0.92 and in determining CVR, for most items the values higher than 0.65 were measured. Exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation yielded three factors with Eigen value of higher than one as follows: Health, organizational factors, and fatigue. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was obtained 0.882 for the whole questionnaire and total ICC was obtained 0.87.
This study represented suitable evidence on strength of factor construct and instrument reliability and could be considered by researchers as a tool for research, training, and practical purposes in bus drivers.