Invited Point of View: The art of conducting workplace intervention studies

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References (3)

  • A. Burdorf

    Identification of determinants of exposure: Consequences for measurement and control strategies

    Occupational and Environmental Medicine

    (2005)
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Cited by (4)

  • Intervention development to reduce musculoskeletal disorders: Is the process on target?

    2016, Applied Ergonomics
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    Furthermore, workplace interventions do not necessarily fit well with traditional gold standard scientific methodologies such as randomised control trials (Cox et al., 2007), with organisational complexity and multifactorial interventions impacting on perceptions of quality and evidence (Neumann et al., 2010). Rigour and having sufficient power to prove a hypothesis are important (Burdorf, 2007), but debate is mounting for the occupational health research community to recognise the need for more broadly conceived alternative methodologies as evidence of the effectiveness of the interventions (Cox et al., 2007). Even when ergonomists and OHS professionals provide ‘state of the art’ advice on MSD interventions these will be of little benefit if they are not implemented.

  • The ability of limited exposure sampling to detect effects of interventions that reduce the occurrence of pronounced trunk inclination

    2010, Applied Ergonomics
    Citation Excerpt :

    Thus, a large body of literature has been devoted to methods for measuring intervention effects on trunk inclination at work (e.g., Marras et al., 1993; McAtamney and Corlett, 1993; Fransson-Hall et al., 1995; van der Beek et al., 1995; Buchholz et al., 1996; Hansson et al., 2001), supported by considerable epidemiologic evidence that trunk inclination is, indeed, a valid proxy of low back disorders (Punnett et al., 1991; Norman et al., 1998; Vingård et al., 2000; Kerr et al., 2001; Hoogendoorn et al., 2002; van den Heuvel et al., 2004). The need to develop measurement strategies that can, with a satisfactory reliability, detect intervention effects on ergonomics exposures such as trunk inclination has been emphasized by several researchers (e.g., Burdorf and van der Beek, 1999; Hagberg et al., 2001), and efficient sampling practices in terms of the number and allocation of exposure samples has been identified as a specific research issue of high priority (Burdorf and van der Beek, 1999; David, 2005; Burdorf, 2007; Wegman et al., 2007). While several methodological aspects of posture assessment by observation have been addressed in extensive reviews (Kilbom, 1994; Juul-Kristensen et al., 1997; Li and Buckle, 1999; Denis et al., 2000), sampling performance has received comparatively limited attention (Burdorf and van Riel, 1996; Hoozemans et al., 2001; Paquet et al., 2005).

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