PERCEPTION OF DIFFICULTIES FOR THE BACK RELATED TO ASSEMBLY WORK - GENERAL FINDINGS AND IMPACT OF BACK HEALTH

The study objective was to describe the perceptions of airplane assemb lers on job demand for the back and how back pain modulated these perc eptions, One hundred and seventy-six workers answered two questionnair es concerning back pain and the perception of work related difficultie s (work activities, work contexts, tools, work positions, efforts), Re sults show that positions and work contexts are perceived as greater s ources of difficulty than efforts or dynamic activities, The duration of a given position is more important than its frequency, Back pain ha s a significant but complex impact on the perception of difficulty, As semblers appear to integrate several factors when evaluating their dif ficulties as opposed to individual aspects, as it is often measured in ergonomic studies, The results have important implications for the me asurement of ergonomic factors in the genesis of back pain and illustr ates the potential for misclassification and biases in current epidemi ologic studies. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.