Psychosocial Work Factors, Job Stress and Strain at the Wheel: Validation of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) in Professional Drivers

Useche, Sergio A.; Montoro, Luís; Alonso, Francisco; Pastor, Juan Carlos · 2019 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01531

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study addresses the lack of validated psychosocial assessment tools specifically tailored for professional drivers, a workforce identified as vulnerable due to adverse working conditions such as time pressure, irregular schedules, and low skill discretion. While psychosocial risks are well-documented in other industries, existing instruments often fail to capture the specific stressors inherent to professional driving. The authors aimed to validate the Enterprise version (2018) of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ-III) for this occupational group to improve occupational safety and health monitoring. The research utilized a cross-sectional design involving 726 professional drivers from 17 autonomous communities in Spain. The sample consisted primarily of males (98.6%) with a mean age of 47.10 years, including cargo, passenger, and other vehicle drivers. Participants completed a paper-based self-report questionnaire during training modules, achieving an 81% response rate. The instrument included the Spanish-translated COPSOQ-III, comprising 74 items across five factors: demands, influence and development, interpersonal relationships and leadership, job insecurity, and strain-effects. Additionally, the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) was used to assess psychological distress for convergent validity. Data were analyzed using competitive Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) via SPSS AMOS, employing weighted least square mean and variance corrected estimation to handle ordinal data. The initial CFA of the original 74-item five-factor structure and a parsimonious two-factor structure both yielded inadequate model fit. Consequently, the researchers excluded 22 items with low psychometric adjustment or factor loadings below 0.50. The resulting modified five-factor structure, containing 52 items, demonstrated a significantly improved fit to the data (CFI = 0.947, RMSEA = 0.039). All remaining items showed considerable, positive, and statistically significant factor loadings. Internal consistency was high, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from 0.852 to 0.919 and composite reliability indices exceeding 0.970 for all latent constructs. The study confirmed the robust factorial structure of the adapted questionnaire for professional drivers. The findings support the hypothesis that a validated, optimized version of the COPSOQ-III is suitable for assessing psychosocial work factors in professional drivers. By excluding poorly performing items, the instrument offers a reliable tool for identifying specific stressors and strain effects in this vulnerable industry. The authors conclude that this validated questionnaire, combined with complementary data on work environment specifics, holds significant research value and practical implications for designing preventive interventions to enhance occupational safety and health among transport workers.

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.

StageOutcomeToolModelPromptAttemptsCompleted
discover success OpenAlex-citations 1 2026-06-20
archive success unpaywall 2 2026-06-26
extract success cached 2 2026-06-26
clean success clean 1 2026-06-20
chunk success chunk 1 2026-06-20
embed success embed Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B 1 2026-06-20
promote success 1 2026-06-20
summarize success llm qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant summ-v5 1 2026-06-26
tag success vector_similarity 6 2026-06-20
verify success 1 2026-06-26

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).