Development and validation of the Occupational Back Pain Prevention Behaviors Questionnaire in nursing personnel
Abstract Background: Occupational back pain is the most prevalent health problem among nurses that needs to be assessed by a valid and multi-factorial questionnaire. The purpose of the present study was to design and develop an instrument for assessing job-related back pain prevention behaviors among nursing professionals. Methods: First an item pool of 49 items was generated. Then, content and face validity was carried out. Consequently, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Mazandaran, Iran. The questionnaire was distributed among a sample of nurses working in hospitals affiliated to Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the factor structure of the questionnaire. Item-scale correlation matrix employed to examine the construct validity. The Cronbach’s alpha was estimated to assess the reliability and the intraclass correlation coefficient was calculated to examine stability. Results: In all 155 nurses participated in the study. The mean age of respondents was 34.1 (SD = 7.66) years, and 83.2% were female. Six factors with 30 items emerged from the exploratory factor analysis: knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, reinforcing factors, enabling factors and behavior that jointly accounted for %66.5 of variance observed. Item-scale correlation matrix showed satisfactory results lending support to construct validity of the questionnaire. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient showed excellent internal consistency (alpha=0.92). The intraclass correlation coefficient with 2-weeks interval also indicated that the questionnaire has satisfactory stability (ICC = 0.97). Conclusions: The findings showed that the Occupational Back Pain Prevention Behavior Questionnaire is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring occupational back pain prevention behaviors among nurses. Keywords: Occupational Back Pain, Prevention behaviors, Psychometric evaluation, PRECEDE-PROCEED model, Nurse