Citation

Sato N, Kamada T, Miyake S, Akatsu J, Kumashiro M, Kume Y. Int. J. Ind. Ergonomics 1999; 24(3): 331-336.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study investigated the subjective mental workload in Type A women during a tracing task by analyzing ratings of six subscales (i.e., mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, own performance, effort, and frustration level) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA-TLX). Eight Type A and eight Type B women performed a tracing task for 30 min. The task consisted of three 10 min trials. Subjects rated their subjective workload on six subscales at the end of each trial. It was found that ratings of mental demand, physical demand, own performance, effort, and frustration level after the task were higher than those of Type B women. The ranks of ratings of frustration level in Type A women were quite high, whereas those of Type B women were quite low throughout the trials. These results suggest that Type A women felt a greater subjective mental workload for some specific aspects as compared with Type B women. In particular, it seems that higher ratings and ranks of frustration level in Type A women greatly contributed toward increasing overall workload in Type A women.Relevance to industryThe Type A behavior pattern has been considered to be one of the potential risk factors for coronary heart disease. A great number of Type A female workers are entering the workforce. Therefore, evaluation of the subjective mental workload of Type A women may be of importance in protecting their health.