Utility of the Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemic-3 Items as a Tool for Assessing Work-Related Stress, and Relationship With Insomnia and Burnout of Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background and Objective The aim of this study is to explore the usefulness of the Stress and Anxiety to Viral Epidemic-3 items (SAVE-3) scale as a tool for assessing work-related stress in healthcare workers.Methods There were 389 participants and all remained anonymous. The SAVE-9, the Patient Health Questionnaire-4, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey for Medical Personnel (MBI-HSS-MP), the perceived stress scale (PSS), and single item insomnia measure were used. After checking whether the SAVE-3 scale is clustered into a sole factor from SAVE-9 scale based on principal component analysis with promax rotation, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was done on the 3 items of the SAVE-3 to examine the factorial validity for a unidimensional structure.Results The SAVE-3 was clustered with factor loadings from 0.664–0.752, and a CFA revealed that 3 items of the SAVE-3 cohered together into a unidimensional construct with fit for all of indices (comparative fit index = 1.00; Tucker Lewis index = 1.031; standardized root-mean-square residual = 0.001; root-mean-square-error of approximation = 0.00). The SAVE-3 scale showed acceptable reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.56 and McDonald’s ω = 0.57) in this sample. A high SAVE-3 score correlated significantly with younger age (r = -0.12, p = 0.02), a high PSS score (r = 0.24, p < 0.001), a high total score for the MBI-HSS-MP (r = 0.35, p < 0.001) and all of its subscales (emotional exhaustion, r = 0.40, p < 0.001; personal accomplishment, r = -0.14, p < 0.005; depersonalization, r = 0.39, p < 0.001), and poor sleep quality (r = 0.15, p < 0.001).Conclusions Taken together, the data suggest that SAVE-3 is a reliable, valid, and usable scale for measuring work-related stress in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 epidemic.