Vdt Strain: Psychological Strain or Physical Basis?

Abstract

Segments of the human factors and occupational health communities believe that visual and muscular complaints of VDT operators strongly reflect psychological discrepancies in the workplace as much as improper ergonomic design. These individuals feel that poor job and organizational design create working conditions conducive to worker dissatisfaction and general complaining, and that VDT operator complaints are due to a transference of this dissatisfaction to the technology. The current study examined psychosocial factors, job satisfaction, environmental conditions and workstation design in regard to VDT operator health complaints in a believed to be low stress VDT population to assess this hypothesis. Data collected from 194 computer programmers working at VDTs were compared with findings from prior studies (Smith et al, 1981; Sauter et al, 1983). The results of this study indicated that this group of VDT operators had higher satisfaction scores, lower job demands and lower stress levels than VDT operators in prior studies, but had a similar prevalence of visual and muscular health complaints. Ergonomic evaluations indicated that the majority of workstations examined did not conform to the recommendations in the literature. These findings strongly suggest that job dissatisfaction and psychosocial stress are not primary determinants of VDT operator visual and muscular health complaints.