Reliability of a Questionnaire and an Ergonomic Checklist for Assessing Working Conditions and Health at Call Centres

Background. The purpose was to study the test-retest reliability and internal consistency of questions in aquestionnaire concerning working conditions and health and the inter-rater reliability of observations andmeasurements according to an ergonomic checklist. Method. Fifty-seven operators participated in a retestquestionnaire and 58 operators participated in an inter-observer test. Results. The questions had fair to good or higher reliability in 142 of the total of 312. Twenty-seven of the total of 44 variables in the ergonomicchecklist were classified as having fair to good or higher reliability. Conclusions. About half of the questionshad fair to good or higher reliability and can be recommended for further analyses. The majority of variablesin the ergonomic checklist were classified as having fair to good or higher reliability. Low reliability does notnecessarily indicate that the reliability of the test, per se, is low but may signify that the conditions measuredvary over time or that the answers are aggregated in one part of the scale.

[1]  K Stavem,et al.  Inter-observer agreement in audit of quality of radiology requests and reports. , 2004, Clinical radiology.

[2]  Jörgen Winkel,et al.  Validity of self-reported exposures to work postures and manual materials handling , 1993 .

[3]  P. Succop,et al.  Reliability of questionnaire information measuring musculoskeletal symptoms and work histories. , 1998, American Industrial Hygiene Association journal.

[4]  T. Armstrong,et al.  Test-retest reliability of an upper-extremity discomfort questionnaire in an industrial population. , 1997, Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health.

[5]  J. Fleiss.  The design and analysis of clinical experiments , 1987 .

[6]  T. Armstrong,et al.  Test-retest reliability of the Upper Extremity Questionnaire among keyboard operators. , 2001, American journal of industrial medicine.

[7]  W. Grove.  Statistical Methods for Rates and Proportions, 2nd ed , 1981 .

[8]  Elmer V. Bernstam,et al.  Inter-Observer Agreement for Quality Measures Applied to Online Health Information , 2004, MedInfo.

[9]  Christina Wiktorin,et al.  Validity of a Self-Administered Questionnaire for Assessing Physical Work Loads in a General Population , 2002, Journal of occupational and environmental medicine.

[10]  M. Wiles.  Elements of Research in Physical Therapy. , 1980 .

[11]  W. Willett,et al.  Misinterpretation and misuse of the kappa statistic. , 1987, American journal of epidemiology.

[12]  J. Nunnally.  Psychometric Theory (2nd ed), New York: McGraw-Hill. , 1978 .

[13]  Waldemar Karwowski,et al.  Measurement of management efforts with respect to integration of quality, safety, and ergonomics issues in manufacturing industry , 2005 .

[14]  B. Everitt,et al.  Statistical methods for rates and proportions , 1973 .

[15]  D. Altman,et al.  Statistics notes: Cronbach's alpha , 1997 .

[16]  M. J. Norušis,et al.  SPSS base system user's guide , 1990 .

[17]  K Ohlsson,et al.  Questionnaire-based mechanical exposure indices for large population studies--reliability, internal consistency and predictive validity. , 2001, Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health.

[18]  John R. Wilson,et al.  HEDOMS—Human Error and Disturbance Occurrence in Manufacturing Systems: Toward the development of an analytical framework , 1999 .