Employee perceptions of task and work posture frequency in an office environment: The Accuracy of self report

The growth and expansion of the computers in the workplace have changed the way that people do work. In effort to minimize the number of work related musculoskeletal disorders, employee exposure to ergonomic risk factors has been number of assessment methods exist for collecting information regarding exposure to ergonomic risk factors in occupational settings. Establishing the validity of such methods is key to developing a greater understanding of the dose response relationship associated with ergonomic risk factors in the workplace. This research utilized work sampling techniques to determine the accuracy with which workers estimated task and work posture duration in an office environment. Factors believed to influence the accuracy of self report were investigated to determine where the sources of error lie. In general, self reports were accurate in determining the amount of time spent performing office tasks and the amount of time spent in work postures. Out of nine tasks investigated, only keying (p = 0.033) and miscellaneous (p = 0.016) indicated a significant difference between self report and actual values. None of the six investigated postures were found to contain significant error. Another finding of this research is that a relationship between the specificity of the measure being investigated and the accuracy of self report may exist. As the specificity of the question being asked increases, the accuracy of the response decreases