Evaluation of the reliability and validity of the university of south Florida environmental assessment questionnaire

Background The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA), identified "exposure assessment methods" as a priority area for research in occupational medicine. Methods The University of South Florida Environmental Assessment Questionnaire (EAQ) describes exposures from the workers point of view. The questionnaire was distributed to a sample of workers drawn from a population of over 3,000 workers employed by a Florida food processing plant. The analysis of the validity was based on 211 subjects and the analysis of the reliability was based on 44 subjects. Results For the category scores, the sensitivities ranged from 0.67 to 1.0, the specificities ranged from 0.52 to 0.83, the positive predictive values ranged from 0.60 to 1.0, and the negative predictive values ranged from 0.55 to 1.0. All of the weighted kappas for the subcategories were above zero. The Spearman rank-order coefficients were above 0.5 for all of the exposure categories except the mold, plant, and animal exposure category which was 0.49. The correlation coefficient for the questionnaire as a whole was 0.85. Conclusions This study showed the EAQ as a whole to be reliable and valid Gathering valid occupational exposure information with this method was both feasible and economical. (C) 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.