[Development and analysis of reliability and validity of occupational stressors scale for manufacturing workers]

To develop a scale of occupational stressors for Chinese manufacturing workers and test its validity and reliability.

Relevant theories and measurement tools of occupational stress were reviewed, and an initial scale was preliminarily constructed by combining interviews and expert evaluation. In 2023, a total of 651 manufacturing workers were selected from 8 manufacturing factories in two batches using the stratified targeted sampling. Sample 1(n=218) was used for the pre-test of the initial scale to form the formal scale, and Sample 2(n=433) was used for reliability and validity analysis, among which 37 participants were selected for retest reliability examinations. Descriptive statistics, item analysis, and exploratory factor analysis were conducted on the sample data, and the internal consistency reliability, criterion-related validity, and retest reliability of the data were tested. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the data from the formal test sample. Two scales, the effort-reward imbalance(ERI) and job content questionnaire(JCQ), are used as a criterion scale to test criterion validity. Item analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to test the reliability and validity of the scale.

The scale contains 33 items, which are divided into four dimensions: efforts-rewards, demand-ability, organizational climate and working environment, with 8, 8, 8 and 9 items respectively. The overall model had good fitness(χ~2/df=2.713, CFI=0.905, IFI=0.905, RMSEA=0.063), with each factor loading rangeing from 0.45 to 0.96. The correlation analysis between the scores of the formal scale and the criterion scale showed that the total scores of the two scales were positively correlated(r=0.758, P<0.01). The internal consistency analysis showed that the Cronbach's α=0.960 for the whole scale, and each dimension's Cronbach's α ranged from 0.894 to 0.934. The retest reliability of the scale was 0.833, and the retest reliability of each dimension ranged from 0.623 to 0.788.

The occupational stressor scale for manufacturing workers has acceptable reliability and validity and can be tentatively applied to evaluate the occupational stress in Chinese manufacturing worker populations.