INTRODUCTION

Quick Exposure Check (QEC¹) and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA²) are two ergonomic risk assessment tools that have been designed to be useful for ergonomists assessing musculoskeletal risk factors in upper extremities at workplaces.

AIM

The aim was to describe the variation between and within ergonomists assessments using QEC and RULA, and to compare the two tools regarding within-observer agreement.

SUBJECTS & METHODS

Twenty ergonomists observed five different work tasks twice with three weeks in between, watching video clips. They made ergonomic risk assessments using both QEC and RULA.

The observed work tasks were: Window replacement, nailing a wooden pallet, toilet cleaning, instrumentation in an operating theatre, and sorting post.

For the statistical analyses, percent agreement and kappa value was used.

RESULTS

There was a variation in assessments between the ergonomists in all positions and movements both when using QEC and RULA, except from assessing armposition when observing window replacement using QEC, where all ergonomists assessed the same position (figure 1).

The ergonomists had higher percent agreement between observation one and two using QEC compared with RULA (table 1).

CONCLUSION

There was a variation when assessing positions and movements in different worktasks both between ergonomists and within the same ergonomist using both QEC and RULA. However the agreement between two observations within observers was higher for QEC.