Development and validation of a self-administered occupational health history questionnaire

Although the diagnosis of work-related illness relies heavily on the occupational history, there is no validated or widely used questionnaire available to obtain this information. We designed an occupational health history questionnaire (OHHQ) in order to assess (1) its usefulness in obtaining exposure and work histories and (2) its ability to discriminate among workers with different degrees of hazardous exposure. A self-administered OHHQ was completed by 100 consecutive patients known to have a high probability of work-related disease (group 1) and by 55 consecutive workers at low risk for occupational toxic exposures (group 2). Group 1 was found to have a significantly higher number of self-assessed overall exposures (SAESs) than group 2 (p less than .001). Within group 1, scores of SAESs were highly correlated with an assessment by an industrial hygienist of the degree of hazardous exposure (p less than .001). The OHHQ can be feasibly self-administered; it has discriminant validity (correctly identifying groups of workers with high and low hazardous exposures) and convergent validity (correlating with an independent assessment of hazardous exposures).