Assessing Psychosocial and Personal Factors in Industrial Work: Issues and Challenges for the Occupational Ergonomics Practitioner and Researcher

Assessing Psychosocial and Personal Factors in Industrial Work: Issues and Challenges for the Occupational Ergonomics Practitioner and Researcher
Author(s):Robert Fox General Motors; Missie Smith Oakland University; Carisa Harris Adamson University of California San Francisco & Berkeley; Menekse Barim NIOSH; Ming-Lun Lu NIOSH; Sean Gallagher Auburn University; Jeannie Nigam NIOSH; Stephen Bao Washington State Department of Labor and Industries SHARP Program
Abstract: The occupational ergonomics practitioner has focused on physical aspects of industrial jobs (e.g. forces exerted joint moments repetitive motion etc.). However some studies have shown that physical risk factors alone do not account for a majority of the risk of many musculo-skeletal injuries. Psychosocial factors have been identified as important in understanding the incidence of many occupational musculo-skeletal disorders. Psychosocial and personal/individual factors have supplemented biomechanical assessments in studies of occupational injury. Others have examined incorporating personal/individual factors into risk assessment methods to give a more complete picture of injury risk that an individual or a subgroup of workers (e.g. gender age prior injury) may face on jobs.
This discussion panel will explore the research in the fields of psychosocial and personal risk factors and their relevance to the assessment of injury risk. This session is relevant for the practitioners who must apply the results of research to real-world problems.