Development and administration of a postural and ergonomic assessment tool: a pilot study

Renata Chlalup Silveira,Isabel Guglielmone,Marcelo La Torre

doi:10.1590/0103-5150.028.003.ao10

Abstract

AbstractIntroduction Prevention of occupational diseases depends on the identification of risk factors, which can be complemented by the functional assessment of workers.Objective The aim of this study was to develop a postural and ergonomic assessment tool for the analysis of subjects’ sitting posture at the computer workstation.Materials and methods This is a quantitative, descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study. Eighty-two employees in the administrative sector of FIERGS were invited to participate in the study. The mean age was 32.8 ± 7.7 years. The IAPE (Instrumento de Avaliação Postural Ergonômica [Postural and Ergonomic Assessment Tool]) development and administration process was performed in four stages: 1) observation of the most commonly adopted postures by employees in the workplace; 2) development of the first version of the IAPE; 3) content validation by two ergonomics experts and content validity index (CVI) calculation; 4) inter-evaluator reproducibility assessment. Reproducibility was assessed by Wilcoxon test and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) (p < 0.05).Results The results obtained from the calculation of the CVI showed that the IAPE possesses a high degree of content validity (CVI = 1). Inter-evaluator reproducibility assessment showed no differences between evaluators (p < 0.05) and ICC values above 0.80 (p < 0.05). This shows an adequate inter-evaluator reproducibility of the tool.Conclusion Based on the results of the IAPE development process, it can be concluded that the tool has content validity and adequate inter-evaluator reproducibility. This tool can aid in the development of occupational disease prevention and health promotion strategies.

Highlights

Prevention of occupational diseases depends on the identification of risk factors, which can be complemented by the functional assessment of workers
We observed the postures most commonly adopted by FIERGS employees, who belonged to group A
With regard to the sitting posture, in the first stage we found that most employees did not use the backrest of the chair and tilted their trunk forwards or ended up sitting on their sacrum

Summary

Introduction

Prevention of occupational diseases depends on the identification of risk factors, which can be complemented by the functional assessment of workers. When combined with poor physical design of workstations and lack of ergonomic and postural knowledge by the worker, fragmentation and high repeatability of working tasks may overload the musculoskeletal system [2]. In this context, the redesign of jobs is of paramount importance. Factors that are likely to be generators of musculoskeletal pain and disorders involve inadequate postures and repetitive movements They are considered to be major predictors of the emergence of occupational diseases and, prevention strategies need to be developed [8, 9, 10, 11]

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Results

Conclusion