Development of Farmer Ergonomic Risk Assessment (FERA) Tool and Comparison with REBA

Abstract

Farmers have work postures and movements during operations involved high ergonomic risk, which could exhibit a long-term health effect on musculoskeletal disorders. Up to date, there is no ergonomic risk assessment tool specific to cultivated farmers. The purpose of this study was to develop an ergonomic risk assessment tool based on working posture evaluation. The study was divided into 2 phases: Tool creation phase and tool development phase for assessing ergonomics risk from working posture by using the case of rubber plantation farmers. Subjects were 60 rubber farmers in Ubon Ratchathani province. Data were collected by using 1) Musculoskeletal disorders frequency and severity questionnaire MSFQ, 2) Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) and 3) Farmers Ergonomics Risk Assessment (FERA). Data was analyst by using pearson Chi-Square statistics, Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient, Weighted Kappa and Inter-rater reliability (ICC) at the significance level of 0.05. The results found that most farmers had musculoskeletal discomfort and the top three areas were shoulders, upper back, and hands/ wrists in equal (73.30%), followed by forearm (71.60%) and neck (70.00%), respectively. The result of the ergonomics risk assessment was very high-risk level from using of REBA (43.30%) which meant to that risks should be minimized immediately, as well as by using FERA that shown the high-risk level (43.30%), which needed to be implemented of the working posture and the surveillance of musculoskeletal disorders. It was found that the ergonomic risk by FERA was consistent with the REBA with statistical significance (Rho = 0.863, P-value < 0.001), Kappa = 0.974. The intra-rater reliability of the researcher, ICC=0.995, the reliability of the farmers, ICC = 0.977. The inter rater-reliability between the researcher and the self-assessment done by farmers, ICC = 0.971. Therefore, this FERA tool can be used for self-assessment of ergonomics risk of the cultivated farmers for prevention of musculoskeletal diseases in the MSDs surveillance program.