Preparing Employers to Implement the Washington State Ergonomics Rule: Evaluation of the Training Workshops

Abstract

Training of managers and workers is a mainstay of health and safety practice but it is rarely evaluated. We assessed the change in knowledge and perceived competence of participants, regarding the Washington State Ergonomics Rule, with the implementation of a 4-hour training session. We used the before and after study design without a control group to evaluate training workshops conducted between April 2001 and August 2002. There were 511 participants involved in the evaluation. Overall, participants' knowledge of the ergonomics rule and hazard reduction methods increased significantly. Those with no previous ergonomics training had a greater increase in their knowledge than those who had some ergonomics training in the past.

Keywords:

• ergonomics
• evaluation
• regulation
• training

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to extend our thanks to the workshop developers and trainers who distributed and collected the evaluation materials; to Paul Snow of WISHA Training and Outreach Services for ensuring data collection and entry; and to Ernesto Carcamo for scoring responses on lifting hazard solutions.

This research was supported by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.

Notes

^A Treated as missing variable for the McNemar's chi square test.

^B Maximum score = 6.0.

^A A response of “no answer” to the question was treated as a missing variable for the McNemar's chi square test.

^A Exact McNemar's significance probability reported due to small size and missing cells.