Validation of a Questionnaire for Heat Strain Evaluation in Women Workers

Introduction: physiological, anthropometrical and thermalperceptual are the most important factors affectingthermoregulation of men and women in workplaces. the purposeof this study was determining the validity of a questionnairemethod for assessing women’s heat strain in workplaces.methods: this cross?sectional study was carried out on 96 healthywomen. data were continuously collected over a period of3 months (july-september) in 2012. mean ± (sd) of age wasfound to be 31.5 ± 7.48 years, of height 1.61 ± 0.05 m, of weight61.55 ± 10.35 kg, and of body mass index 23.52 ± 3.75 kg/m2 indifferent workplaces. heart rate and oral temperature were measuredby heart rate monitoring and a medical digital thermometer,respectively. subjects completed a draft questionnaire about theeffective factors in the onset of heat strain. after collecting thequestionnaires, the data were analyzed by applying cronbach’sacalculation, factor analysis method, pearson correlation andreceiver operator characteristic curves using the spss 18 software.results: the value for cronbach’s a was found to be 0.68. thefactor analysis method on items of draft questionnaire extractedthree subscale (16 variables) which they explained 63.6% ofthe variance. according to the results of receiver operatorcharacteristic curve analysis, the cut?off questionnaire score forseparating people with heat strain from people with no heat strainwas obtained to be 17.conclusions: the results of this research indicated that thisquantitative questionnaire has an acceptable reliability and validity,and a cut?off point. therefore it could be used in the preliminaryscreening of heat strain in women in warm workplaces, when otherheat stress evaluation methods are not available.