[A competency domains-items set for occupational hygienists in Japan]

The objective of this study was to summarize a combined competency domains and items set for occupational hygienists in Japan since there is a lack of such a set due to the existence of several national certification specialists in the field of occupational hygiene.

A literature search, Kitagawa Jiro's (KJ) method study, Delphi method study, and a questionnaire survey were utilized. The domains, roles, knowledge, and skills included in the home pages and reports of representative organizations in the USA, UK, and Japan, and those in papers found through Google Scholar were compared and rearranged to about 150 items. From these, occupational hygiene competency domains and items were discussed and selected by five occupational hygiene specialists using the KJ method and prioritized by 13 occupational hygiene specialists using the Delphi method. Additionally, responses of 53 union members of occupational hygiene specialists from a university were obtained by a questionnaire survey.

Ten occupational competency domains and 147 items were identified through the literature search, 10 domains and 135 items through the KJ method, six domains and 63 items through the Delphi method, and lastly, five domains and 51 items were identified through the questionnaire survey. The five domains included (1) discovering problems and potential developments and making decisions, (2) solving problems and promoting developmental occupational hygiene, (3) communicating with stakeholders and recovering in an emergency, (4) empowering organizations to which you belong, and (5) educating and facilitating workers.

Although the 53 subjects in the questionnaire survey were predominantly 20 to 30 years old and more than half of the 13 Delphi method participants were relatively old veterans, there was a positive correlation between the evaluation of 63 items by both methods. These results suggest that the occupational hygiene competency set of five domains and 51 items obtained in this study is a combined competency set that is representative of Japan.