Measuring production loss due to health and work environment problems: construct validity and implications.

Objective: The aim was to validate two measures of production loss, health-related and work environment-related production loss, concerning their associations with health status and work environment factors.

Methods: Validity was assessed by evaluating the construct validity. Health problems related and work environment-related problems (or factors) were included in separate analyses and evaluated regarding the significant difference in proportion of explained variation (R) of production loss.

Result: health problems production loss was not found to fulfill the criteria for convergent validity in this study; however, the measure of work environment-related production loss did fulfill the criteria that were set up.

Conclusion: The measure of work environment-related production loss can be used to screen for production loss due to work environment problems as well as an outcome measure when evaluating the effect of organizational interventions.