Development Of Work-related Disorders Research Articles

Spanish version of the Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (SOFI): Factorial replication, reliability and validity

This paper presents the adaptation to Spanish of the Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (SOFI) (Ahsberg, Gamberale and Kjellberg, 1997), an instrument for the multidimensional evaluation of work-related fatigue. A total of 240 nurses working in eight special attention units responded to a pool of 25 items about their level of fatigue after work. Proposed SOFI structure (Ahsberg, 2000) was tested by means of Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and the data demonstrate an acceptable fit to the theoretical five-factor model (with lack of energy defined as a general latent factor representing much of the variance of the items) when the number of items was reduced to 15. Alpha coefficients were calculated, and high internal consistency values were obtained for most of the subscales. Convergence was also evaluated by calculating correlations between the SOFI subscales and a number of independent indices. All five resulting subscales make up a promising 15-item instrument for the evaluation of work-related fatigue in the Spanish language. Relevance to industry A reliable and valid instrument for the multidimensional evaluation of work-related fatigue may be of great importance to an understanding of the origin and development of work-related disorders. This study presents the adaptation to Spanish of the SOFI, a highly promising instrument, given the lack of multidimensional instruments adapted to the Spanish language for the measurement of work-related fatigue.