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

Abstract

Introduction: 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.