Variety in VDT work: An issue for assessment in work environment research

Abstract

This article stresses the necessity of renewing methods for assessing the content of VDT work. It is introduced by a discussion of different approaches and methods, focusing particularly on the most common taxonomy, the division of VDT work into four categories: data entry, data acquisition, interactive communication, and word and text processing. This classification has been employed in the field of occupational health research in studies that mainly specialized in VDT users. The taxonomy is utilized for an organizational analysis aimed both at characterizing organizational patterns with respect to task profile and degree of specialization (in the computer‐related part of the work) and at identifying work situations that involve a large amount of daily computer use of just one type. The analysis was tested empirically at eight office workplaces (N‐269). Clear differences among the workplaces emerged with respect to the characteristics listed before. First, there were differences in terms of how many work...