Work stress inventory for dental assistants: development and psychometric evaluation.

OBJECTIVES: The purposes of this study were to develop a work stress inventory for dental assistants (WSI-DA) in Jordan and examine its psychometric properties and to describe potentially stressful work-related conditions related to the profession of dental assistance in Jordan.

METHODS: A total of 542 dental assistants working in private dental clinics in Jordan participated in this study. The stages of instrument development included selecting an initial item pool, choosing the best items, deciding on the questionnaire format, pretesting the instrument, and determining its reliability and validity. An initial set of 55 items was selected and categorized into nine hypothetical categories. Further testing and using factor analysis ended with a 35-item, nine-scale instrument. The raw score for each scale was calculated by adding the responses for individual items and then transformed to 0-100 scales. The item-level validity, item internal consistency, item discriminant validity, and Cronbach's alpha were assessed.

RESULTS: Nine factors had eigenvalues greater than one. The nine factors accounted for 78.7 percent of the total variability in the 35-item questionnaire. All item-scale correlations were greater than the recommended correlation of 0.40. Except patient's suffer scale (Cronbach's alpha = 0.56), all other scales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha exceeding the minimum standard of 0.7 and ranging from 0.71 to 0.87. Test-retest reliability showed acceptable reliability in all nine scales and ranged from 0.61 to 0.92.

CONCLUSIONS: The 35-item, nine-scale WSI-DA demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability when used among dental assistants in Jordan.