Fatigue Assessment Scales: A comprehensive literature review

Fatigue is one of the most important issues relating with safety and other aspects of human life. To understand fatigue and its relative factors and causes, there is a need to useful instruments, such as self-reported scales. The purpose of this study is to identify and present useful self-reported scales to measure fatigue.

Data were extracted from following three databases, ISI Web of Science, Scopus and Science direct and the search was undertaken for the period of 1996-2018. The search scope of this study was in ergonomics and health outcomes and the language of elected scales was in English. The articles that used objective fatigue scales or used the subjective scales for sleep-related studies were excluded from the review. Screening and appraisal of 12540 articles resulted in 115 articles being included in this review.

According to the obtained results, details of 12 self-reported fatigue scales are reported. These scales are divided in two types; five scales of them are in unidimensional scale group and the others are multidimensional scales. The Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) scale is the shortest form of scales in this study. Although, the Multidimensional Fatigue Symptom Inventory (MFSI) and Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (SOFI) scales by more items can evaluate five aspects of fatigue. Six questionnaires of these scales were measured fatigue among working people.

There are several scales with acceptable validation to distinguish and measuring fatigue in studies or at work.