Horses for courses – but no favourites. A reply to three commentaries

Abstract

Our paper (Hignett and Wilson 2004) has elicited a range of responses from the commentaries. Hancock and Szalma (2004), and Desnoyers (2004), are largely supportive of embracing the challenge to take a wider perspective for the theoretical foundations for ergonomics, whilst Kanis (2004) looks in detail at operational issues citing two examples where both qualitative and quantitative approaches could be used. We have achieved our aim of provoking a discussion and are heartened by the support for the use of qualitative methodology in ergonomics research and practice.

Keywords:

• Qualitative methodology
• theory
• practice

Acknowledgments

About the authors

Sue Hignett PhD, MSc, MCSP, EurErg, MErgS, has worked in the healthcare industry for 20 years with the last 10 years in Ergonomics. She is the Director of the Hospital Ergonomics and Patient Safety Unit (HEPSU) in the Department of Human Sciences which currently holds research grants with NHS Estates, EPSRC and Dept. of Health. Dr Hignett is the chair of the International Ergonomics Association Technical Group on Hospital Ergonomics & Patient Safety and co-chair of the European Panel on Patient Handling Ergonomics (EPPHE). She is a member of the MRC/EPSRC/ESRC Patient Safety Network on Adaptive Systems and Tailored Information.

John R. Wilson is Professor of Human Factors in the School of Mechanical, Materials, Manufacturing Engineering and Management, University of Nottingham. He previously held posts at the Universities of Loughborough, Birmingham in the UK, and was Visiting Professor at University of California, Berkeley and University of New South Wales, Australia. At Nottingham he is Director of The Institute for Occupational Ergonomics and Director of the Virtual Reality Applications Research Team. In addition, he has been part-time Strategic Advisor on Human Factors on secondment to Network Rail since 2001. John Wilson has produced over 450 publications, and more than 250 are in refereed books, journals or collections. He was awarded the Sir Frederic Bartlett Medal of the Ergonomics Society in 1995, for services to international ergonomics teaching and research. He has been principal investigator or grant holder on over 50 major grants from Research Councils, government, the European Union and public bodies as well as having carried out research or consultancy for over 100 companies. He is a Chartered Psychologist and a Chartered Engineer, a member of the Peer Review College for both the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, member of Editorial Boards for a number of journals, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Applied Ergonomics.