[Construction of a subjective fatigue scale for adolescent students]

There is no appropriate scale to evaluate subjective symptoms of fatigue (SSF) in everyday life in adolescent students. An existing scale long before constructed for laborers has been used. It is essential to establish a practical, rational scale. The purpose of this study was to construct a practical scale to measure subjective symptoms of fatigue for high school and college students.

A questionnaire on SSF was administered to 5,435 students aged 15-20 yr. Factor analysis based on the oblique Promax rotation method was applied to a correlation matrix consisting of 44 items.

Six factors were interpreted as follows: difficulty with concentrated thinking, languor, reduced activation, reduced motivation, drowsiness and feeling of physical disintegration. A subjective fatigue scale (SFS-Y: 24 items) was constructed using these factors. The eigen-value of principal component analysis, alpha reliability coefficients, and test-retest reliability coefficients for each subscale were very high.

The SFS-Y generated in the present study is a very practical scale with high validity and reliability.