A sociotechnical systems approach to enhance safety climate in the trucking industry: Development of a methodology.

The systems approach is increasingly used as a framework within which to examine safety climate. Utilizing a macroergonomics approach to design work systems can help identify aspects of human-technology-organization interfaces that impact workers' perceptions of safety, both positively and negatively. Such an approach also supplements traditional uses of safety climate as a leading indicator of safety and helps expand research toward an approach that can determine problems impacting safety.

A sociotechnical systems approach to enhance safety climate in the trucking industry: Results of an in-depth investigation.

The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology that extends safety climate beyond an overall score by using the framework of macroergonomics to examine the entire system in a more comprehensive manner. The study is discussed in two papers: one paper describes the study methodology in detail (Murphy, Robertson, Huang, Jeffries, & Dainoff, in press), and the current paper describes the results of the study. Multiple methods were combined to create a systems approach, and those methods include the critical incident technique, contextual inquiries with functional role diagrams, and affinity mapping.

Assessing the utility of TAM, TPB, and UTAUT for advanced driver assistance systems.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are intended to enhance driver performance and improve transportation safety. The potential benefits of these technologies, such as reduction in number of crashes, enhancing driver comfort or convenience, decreasing environmental impact, etc., have been acknowledged by transportation safety researchers and federal transportation agencies.

Effect of weather on pedestrian trip count and duration: City-scale evaluations using mobile phone application data.

We examined the association between meteorological (weather) conditions in a given locale and pedestrian trips frequency and duration, through the use of locative digital data. These associations were determined for seasonality, urban microclimate, and commuting. We analyzed GPS data from a broadly available activity tracking mobile phone application that automatically recorded 247,814 trips from 5432 unique users in Boston and 257,697 trips from 8256 users in San Francisco over a 50-week period.

Use of portable ladders - field observations and self-reported safety performance in the cable TV industry.

Portable ladders incidents remain a major cause of falls from heights. This study reported field observations of environments, work conditions and safety behaviour involving portable ladders and their correlations with self-reported safety performance. Seventy-five professional installers of a company in the cable and other pay TV industry were observed for 320 ladder usages at their worksites.

Chronotypes in the US - Influence of age and sex.

An individual's chronotype reflects how the circadian system embeds itself into the 24-h day with rhythms in physiology, cognition and behavior occurring accordingly earlier or later. In view of an increasing number of people working at unusual times and linked health and safety risks, the wide range in human chronotypes may provide opportunities to allow people to work (and sleep) at times that are in synch with their circadian physiology. We aimed at estimating the distribution of chronotypes in the US population by age and sex.

An Ergonomic Assessment of Hospital Linen Bag Handling.

The Joint Commission provides accreditation standards for staging hospital waste, but there are no federal lifting safety standards for linen bags. We evaluated hospital laundry bag lifting using the Revised National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Lifting Equation. We hypothesized that the permitted 32-gallon linen container capacity might allow filling to weights above our calculated Recommended Weight Limit (RWL) for some lifting positions and contents.

Task-related and person-related variables influence the effect of low back pain on anticipatory postural adjustments.

Background: People with low back pain exhibit altered postural coordination that has been suggested as a target for treatment, but heterogeneous presentation has rendered it difficult to identify appropriate candidates and protocols for such treatments. This study evaluated the associations of task-related and person-related factors with the effect of low back pain on anticipatory postural adjustments.

Methods: Thirteen subjects with and 13 without low back pain performed seated, rapid arm flexion in self-initiated and cued conditions.

Systematic review and meta-analysis of gait mechanics in young and older adults.

Background: Age-related gait changes may play a critical role in functional limitations of older adults. Despite sizable interest in determining how age alters walking mechanics, small sample sizes and varied outcome measures have precluded a comprehensive understanding of the impact of age on lower extremity joint kinematics and kinetics.

Objective: The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the aging gait mechanics literature.

Circumstances of fall-related injuries by age and gender among community-dwelling adults in the United States.

Introduction: Falls are the leading cause of injury in almost all age-strata in the U.S. However, fall-related injuries (FI) and their circumstances are under-studied at the population level, particularly among young and middle-aged adults.

Improvements in musculoskeletal health and computing behaviors: Effects of a macroergonomics office workplace and training intervention.

Computer use and its association with musculoskeletal and visual symptoms is an escalating concern. Organizations are shifting to a more proactive injury prevention perspective. Accordingly, a macroergonomics intervention consisting of flexible workplace design and office ergonomics training was designed to examine the effects on worker's computing behaviors, postures, and musculoskeletal discomfort, and their relationship to psychosocial factors.

Using the Microsoft Kinect™ to assess 3-D shoulder kinematics during computer use.

Shoulder joint kinematics has been used as a representative indicator to investigate musculoskeletal symptoms among computer users for office ergonomics studies. The traditional measurement of shoulder kinematics normally requires a laboratory-based motion tracking system which limits the field studies. In the current study, a portable, low cost, and marker-less Microsoft Kinect™ sensor was examined for its feasibility on shoulder kinematics measurement during computer tasks.

An item-response theory approach to safety climate measurement: The Liberty Mutual Safety Climate Short Scales.

Zohar and Luria's (2005) safety climate (SC) scale, measuring organization- and group- level SC each with 16 items, is widely used in research and practice. To improve the utility of the SC scale, we shortened the original full-length SC scales. Item response theory (IRT) analysis was conducted using a sample of 29,179 frontline workers from various industries.

Regional socioeconomic disparities in outcomes for workers with low back pain in the United States.

Background: Although regional socioeconomic (SE) factors have been associated with worse health outcomes, prior studies have not addressed important confounders or work disability.

Methods: A national sample of 59 360 workers' compensation (WC) cases to evaluate impact of regional SE factors on medical costs and length of disability (LOD) in occupational low back pain (LBP).

Results: Lower neighborhood median household incomes (MHI) and higher state unemployment rates were associated with longer LOD.

Work Productivity Loss in Young Workers Is Substantial and Is Associated With Spinal Pain and Mental Ill-health Conditions.

Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate the effect of spinal pain and mental ill-health conditions on work productivity in 22-year-old workers.

Methods: A cross-sectional design using data from the Raine Study cohort (n = 867) including self-reported work productivity and self-report of health practitioner diagnosed medical conditions.

Result: Mean (median, 25th-percentile, 75th-percentile) annualized cost of health-related absenteeism was $AUD1899 ($0, $0, $1738) per worker.

biomechZoo: An open-source toolbox for the processing, analysis, and visualization of biomechanical movement data.

It is common for biomechanics data sets to contain numerous dependent variables recorded over time, for many subjects, groups, and/or conditions. These data often require standard sorting, processing, and analysis operations to be performed in order to answer research questions. Visualization of these data is also crucial.

An entropy-assisted musculoskeletal shoulder model.

Optimization combined with a musculoskeletal shoulder model has been used to estimate mechanical loading of musculoskeletal elements around the shoulder. Traditionally, the objective function is to minimize the summation of the total activities of the muscles with forces, moments, and stability constraints. Such an objective function, however, tends to neglect the antagonist muscle co-contraction.

Field tests of a participatory ergonomics toolkit for Total Worker Health.

Growing interest in Total Worker Health (TWH) programs to advance worker safety, health and well-being motivated development of a toolkit to guide their implementation. Iterative design of a program toolkit occurred in which participatory ergonomics (PE) served as the primary basis to plan integrated TWH interventions in four diverse organizations. The toolkit provided start-up guides for committee formation and training, and a structured PE process for generating integrated TWH interventions.

Passive restraint reduces visually induced motion sickness in older adults.

Virtual environments such as those used in video games and driving/flight simulators are used for entertainment and training, but are often associated with visually induced motion sickness (VIMS). In this study, we asked whether passive restraint of the head and torso could reduce VIMS in younger and older adults. Twenty-one younger (18-35 years) and 16 older (65 + years) healthy adults engaged in a simulated driving task using a console video game while seated.

The influence of geographic variation in socio-cultural factors on length of work disability.

Background: Previous research has largely concentrated on how individual-level factors explain work disability duration. However, growing evidence suggests socio-cultural factors may significantly influence length of work disability.

Objective: This study examined whether socio-cultural factors that vary by location of residence influence length of disability.

Conceptualizing the dynamics of workplace stress: a systems-based study of nursing aides.

Background: Workplace stress is a complex phenomenon that may often be dynamic and evolving over time. Traditional linear modeling does not allow representation of recursive feedback loops among the implicated factors. The objective of this study was to develop a multidimensional system dynamics model (SDM) of workplace stress among nursing aides and conduct simulations to illustrate how changes in psychosocial perceptions and workplace factors might influence workplace stress over time.

Gait adaptation on surfaces with different degrees of slipperiness.

Gait adaptation to employ different ways to avoid a potential slip is needed to continue walking safely on a new surface, especially when transitioning to a slippery surface. In this experiment, participants walked back and forth five times (trials) on surfaces with different degrees of slipperiness. The results show that trial 1 was significantly different from other trials for most of the dependent variables, especially for the low and high friction conditions.