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Abstract
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INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to validate the agricultural lower limb assessment (ALLA) ergonomics checklist, which was developed for various agricultural tasks in Korea.
METHODS: 196 working postures were selected from the real agricultural tasks to verify ALLA, a lower limb body posture assessment tool, and then evaluated by 16 ergonomic experts. Hit rate, quadratic weighted κ, one-way analysis of variance, and t test analyses were applied to compare ALLA with other assessment tools.
RESULTS: ALLA analysis had superior hit rate with ergonomic expert assessment compared with other assessment tools. Quadratic weighted κ analysis also showed ALLA provided superior estimates of risk levels for farm working postures.
DISCUSSION: ALLA would be an appropriate assessment tool to estimate risk factors for various lower limb body postures which frequently occur in agricultural tasks in Korea. ALLA is a simple and accurate risk assessment tool that could be usefully applied to identify and mitigate risk factors and work related musculoskeletal disorders in agricultural tasks, and also to evaluate the effects of control and intervention for working conditions.
Note: ALLA (agricultural lower limb assessment); OWAS (Ovako working posture analysis system); REBA (rapid entire body assessment); RULA (rapid upper limb assessment).
Keywords: Ergonomics risk assessment tools; Agriculture
Language: en |