Development and validation of a web-based questionnaire for surveying the health and working conditions of high-performance marine craft populations

BACKGROUND: High-performance marine craft crews are susceptible to various adverse health conditions caused by multiple interactive factors. However, there are limited epidemiological data available for assessment of working conditions at sea. Although questionnaire surveys are widely used for identifying exposures, outcomes and associated risks with high accuracy levels, until now, no validated epidemiological tool exists for surveying occupational health and performance in these populations. AIM: To develop and validate a web-based questionnaire for epidemiological assessment of occupational and individual risk exposure pertinent to the musculoskeletal health conditions and performance in high-performance marine craft populations. METHOD: A questionnaire for investigating the association between work-related exposure, performance and health was initially developed by a consensus panel under four subdomains, viz. demography, lifestyle, work exposure and health and systematically validated by expert raters for content relevance and simplicity in three consecutive stages, each iteratively followed by a consensus panel revision. The item content validity index (I-CVI) was determined as the proportion of experts giving a rating of 3 or 4. The scale content validity index (S-CVI/Ave) was computed by averaging the I-CVIs for the assessment of the questionnaire as a tool. Finally, the questionnaire was pilot tested. RESULTS: The S-CVI/Ave increased from 0.89 to 0.96 for relevance and from 0.76 to 0.94 for simplicity, resulting in 36 items in the final questionnaire. The pilot test confirmed the feasibility of the questionnaire. CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows that the web-based questionnaire fulfils previously published validity acceptance criteria and is therefore considered valid and feasible for the empirical surveying of epidemiological aspects among high-performance marine craft crews and similar populations.