Evaluation and Comparison of Three Exposure Assessment Techniques

Abstract

This study was conducted to verify the performance of a recently developed subjective rating (SR) exposure assessment technique and to compare estimates made using this and two other techniques (trade mean, or TM, and task-based, or TB, approaches) to measured exposures. Subjects (n = 68) each completed three full-shift noise measurements over 4 months. Individual measured mean exposures were created by averaging each subject's repeated measurements, and TM, TB, and SR estimates were created using noise levels from worksites external to the current study. The bias, precision, accuracy, and absolute agreement of estimates created using the three techniques were evaluated by comparing estimated exposures with measured exposures. Trade mean estimates showed little bias, while neither the TM nor the SR techniques produced unbiased estimates, and the SR estimates showed the greatest bias of the three techniques. Accuracy was essentially equivalent among the three techniques. All three techniques showed poor agreement with measured exposures and were not highly correlated with each other. Estimates from the SR technique generally performed similarly to the TM and TB techniques. Methods to incorporate information from each technique into exposure estimates should be explored.

Keywords:

• exposure
• noise
• subjective rating
• task-based assessment

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was funded by NIOSH grant R01 OH003912– 07. The authors gratefully acknowledge the data collection efforts of Stephanie Griffin and Jane Edelson, as well as the assistance and support of the participating workers and companies, without whom this study would not have been possible. The manuscript was greatly improved through the review and comments provided by Hendrika Meischke.