DEVELOPING THE OCCUPATIONAL STRESS INDICATOR (OSI) FOR USE IN BRAZIL - A REPORT ON THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE TRANSLATED OSI

The Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI) was translated into Brazilian Portuguese and administered to a sample of 84 white-collar workers in Brazil. Five of the six scales of the OSI (job satisfaction, mental and physical hearth, coping, type A behaviour, sources of stress) showed acceptable reliability. The reliability of the sixth scale (locus of control) was disappointing, in keeping with earlier findings that suggest that this scale requires further development. Alternative measures of the stress outcomes - job satisfaction, mental hearth and physical health - were taken in order to assess the construct validity of these three scales. These measures included translations of the Hackman-Oldham job satisfaction measure and the Crown-Crisp Experiential Index, as well as subjective measures of health-related behaviours. Correlational and multivariate analyses of these data suggested that the job satisfaction, mental health and physical hearth scales of the OSI had good validity, with the physical health measure probably including a psychosomatic component. These findings are promising for the development of a new version of the OSI designed for use in South America.