Occupational Neck Pain Prevention Behaviors Questionnaire: Development and psychometric evaluation

Aims: Neck pain is a common problem among teachers. This study aimed to design and evaluate an instrument for measuring occupational neck pain preventive behaviors among teachers. Method and Materials: This study was conducted from August to December 2020 among high school teachers in Tehran, Iran. In qualitative phase a purposeful sample of teachers (30 participants) were interviewed to generate an item pool. Then content and face validity were performed by which an initial questionnaire was sent to 25 teachers of the target community to be examined in terms of simplicity, importance, relevance, and clarity. Then, a cross sectional study with 146 teachers with mean age 36.7 ± 8.92 years was conducted by which, exploratory factor analysis was done to obtain the factor structure of the questionnaire. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) was calculated to assess reliability and Intra Class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) to assess stability. Findings: Based on analysis of the exploratory factor, 8 factors with 43 substances, that together accounted for 65,25% variances were obtained. The correlation matrix in the case scale to establish the validity of the questionnaire showed satisfactory results. The results of face validity showed that 4 factors were not approved and were removed from the questionnaire. Reliability evaluation with internal consistency method (Cronbach's alpha) showed excellent compatibility (0.87). The ICC reliability assessment showed that the questionnaire has satisfactory stability (0.92). Conclusion: This instrument could be applied to evaluate unhealthy behavior due to their neck pain and so improve these risky behaviors.

Occupational Neck Pain Prevention Behaviors Questionnaire: Development and psychometric evaluation Keywords:

Instrument development , Teachers , Occupational neck pain , Health belief model , Preventive behaviors.