Validation of a quick check for measurement of mental stress among teachers (based upon the BAAM procedure)

Status:

completed 10/2009

Aims:

Risk assessment includes the assessment of mental factors. The BAAM procedure was used for this purpose in schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. BAAM involves the assessment of job content, work organization, man management and social relationships. A quick check was used in the first instance for a preliminary evaluation of the teachers' individual stress situations. The validity of the brief check was reviewed in a project.

Activities/Methods:

In order for the validity of the quick check to be reviewed, it was made available together with the BAAM procedure to 100 schools. The BAAM procedure has already been validated in a previous study. Both procedures were completed by all teaching staff. The validity of the quick check was studied by comparison of the data from the BAAM procedure and quick check.

Results:

1048 teachers at 76 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia completed both the brief-check and BAAM® questionnaires. The item analysis revealed acceptable values for the brief check, with only a few exceptions. For validation, the questions on the brief-check questionnaire were expected to correlate closely with questions with similar content on the BAAM® questionnaire. This expectation has largely been confirmed. The relationship between the overall indices (sum scores) of the brief-check and BAAM® questionnaires is quite high (r=.66) compared to usual validity values. In other words, the brief-check questionnaire generally produces a similar result to that delivered by the BAAM® questionnaire. It can be concluded from this that the brief-check questionnaire measures valid mental stresses.

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