Toronto • May 28-29, 2010 • Student Day and Workshops: May 27
Paper: The use of work role functioning in evaluating an ergonomic intervention
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Day/Time: Friday at 10:30
Room: St. David Room, 3rd Floor
Objectives:
While work role functioning and other "presenteeism" measures have been widely used in observational studies and in clinical evaluation studies, few studies report the use of "presenteeism" measures in ergonomic interventions. We report the use of work role functioning in a non-randomized field trail of a new ergonomic chair and training. The primary hypothesis is does the ergonomic intervention significantly improve work role functioning?
Methods:
Data come from two intervention studies in a public sector and private-sector organization. Data collection occurred two months and one month prior to the intervention and two, six and 12 months post-intervention. During each round, a work environment and health questionnaire was completed via the internet. The intervention was a highly adjustable ergonomic chair and office ergonomics training (Amick 2004). One group received only the training and a control group received the training at the end of the study. Work role functioning (WRF) was measured following Amick (2000). It is a 27-item questionnaire with a Cronbach alpha of .92. WRF varies from 0-100 with 100 functioning well in the job and 0 unable to function in job for a given state of physical and emotional health. All analyses were conducted using multi-level modelling with work role functioning nested within individuals within intervention site.
Results:
The overall sample included 414 individuals. Intervention site was non-significant and thus results are reported for both sites combined. Overall, the chair-with-training intervention was marginally non-significant in improving work role functioning (p=0.06). However, three of five sub-scales (physical demands, mental demands, social demands) were significantly improved while two were not (scheduling and output demands).
Conclusions:
Workers who received a highly adjustable chair and office ergonomics training had improved work role functioning in meeting the physical, mental and social demands of the job. In a knowledge workforce with significant interactions with customers, these demands are critical to being an effective performer. These results show the importance of using a multidimensional scale compared to a shorter scale. Future work should continue to test the usability of this type of measure in ergonomic interventions.
