Inter-rater reliability of PATH observations for assessment of ergonomic risk factors in hospital work

Abstract

This study examined the inter-rater reliability of expert observations of ergonomic risk factors by four analysts. Ten jobs were observed at a hospital using a newly expanded version of the PATH method (Buchholz et al. 1996), to which selected upper extremity exposures had been added. Two of the four raters simultaneously observed each worker onsite for a total of 443 observation pairs containing 18 categorical exposure items each. For most exposure items, kappa coefficients were 0.4 or higher. For some items, agreement was higher both for the jobs with less rapid hand activity and for the analysts with a higher level of ergonomic job analysis experience. These upper extremity exposures could be characterised reliably with real-time observation, given adequate experience and training of the observers. The revised version of PATH is applicable to the analysis of jobs where upper extremity musculoskeletal strain is of concern.

Keywords:

• inter-rater reliability
• PATH method
• ergonomic risk factor
• hospital work

Acknowledgements

We thank Jean Cromie and Manuel Cifuentes for early revisions of the PATH method, Scott Fulmer for development of electronic PATH templates, Gustavo Perez for help with data collection, Dr Bryan Buchholz for review of an early version of this paper and Jody Lally and Joan Handstad for facility liaison efforts in support of data collection. This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Grant #R01-OH07381, ‘Health Disparities among Healthcare Workers’. The contents of this manuscript are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIOSH. An earlier version was presented at the US Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 49th annual meeting in 2005.