Abstract

RODRIGUEZ RUIZ, Yordán  and  HEREDIA RICO, Jobany J. INDIVIDUAL RISK ASSESSMENT METHOD INTER-RATER RELIABILITY. Hacia promoc. Salud [online]. 2013, vol.18, n.1, pp.41-56. ISSN 0121-7577.

Objective: The objective of this work is the evaluation of the inter-rater reliability level of the ergonomic tool: Individual Risk Assessment. The inter-rater reliability of any assessment method values its capacity for providing similar assessment independently from the rater who uses it. Using the Individual Risk Assessment method different variables associated with: the back, arm, wrist and neck postures, and their interaction with the frequency of movement; their interaction with movement frequency; work rhythm and effort carried out are evaluated. Materials and Methods: Forty-two raters were trained to conduct the experiment, one half took a three-hours training and the rest a six-hours training. All of them assessed seven tasks representative of the Cuban industry. The training and the assessment of the videos were carried out between January and March 2011. From the statistical viewpoint, the reliability assessment was mainly based on the intra-class correlation coefficient calculation. Results: It is shown that while using the Individual Risk Assessment method the inter-rater reliability is acceptable, existing a higher agreement on the valuation given to dichotomy variables than the ones given to the ordinal variables. Conclusion: The need to improve the rater's skills to assessment small body areas and to determine the frequency in which some tasks are carried out was confirmed. Higher levels of agreement between raters using this tool on practical environments are expected.

Keywords : Musculoskeletal diseases; evaluation; human engineering; statistical methods and procedures; reproducibility of results.

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