Validity of self-assessed reports of occurrence and duration of occupational tasks.
To obtain quantitative estimates of the physical workload in epidemiological and intervention studies of musculoskeletal disorders, there is a need to extend task based exposure data to job exposure profiles. For this purpose a work task diary was developed and evaluated. This was validated against direct observations of a day's work for twenty-two female office workers and twenty female hospital cleaners. There was a good agreement regarding the occurrence of the main tasks. However, the less time-consuming tasks were under-reported. Moreover, about two thirds of the changes between tasks were not reported. The difficulties of defining tasks that function as occupational entities seems to be a major reason for the lack of agreement. The underestimation of the duration of breaks/pauses was most pronounced for the cleaners. Still, the diary would be useful for the calculation of job exposure, by time-weighting task exposure data, when the tasks and/or their duration vary between days.
Unge
J
J
Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Lund University Hospital, SE-221 85 Lund, Sweden. jeannette.unge@sjukgym.lu.se
Hansson
Gert-Ake
GA
Ohlsson
K
K
Nordander
C
C
Axmon
A
A
Winkel
J
J
Skerfving
S
S
D000328:Adult; D016552:Ergometry; D005260:Female; D006796:Household Work; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009790:Occupations; D009817:Office Management; D012647:Self-Assessment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D016526:Workload