From Ten Items to Four: Development and Validation of the FAS-4 for Assessing Physician Fatigue in a National Sample

Résumé fourni par la source

This study aimed to develop and validate a brief four-item version of the Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS-4) while preserving the psychometric properties of the original 10-item measure (FAS-10) among physicians. A national sample of 7,170 Brazilian physicians was randomly selected from the Federal Council of Medicine database and divided into calibration and validation samples. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine the structure of the FAS-10 and guide item reduction. The FAS-4 was evaluated through confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency, gender measurement invariance testing, and associations with psychological distress, occupational demands, and health-related indicators. The original FAS-10 showed suboptimal factorial fit, whereas the refined FAS-4, comprising two positively and two negatively worded items, demonstrated excellent fit indices. Reliability estimates were stable across samples, with Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega coefficients of approximately .91 for the FAS-10 and .76 for the FAS-4. The FAS-4 showed strong evidence of measurement invariance across gender and reproduced the external correlational pattern of the original scale, including associations with psychological distress and consistent relationships with occupational and health-related variables. The FAS-4 provides a concise, reliable, and valid alternative to the original FAS-10, offering improved efficiency for occupational health assessments while maintaining essential psychometric properties.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.