Usefulness of the Rapid Office Strain Assessment (ROSA) tool in detecting differences before and after an ergonomics intervention.

BACKGROUND: Most ergonomics studies on office workstations evaluate the effects of an intervention only by subjective measures such as musculoskeletal pain and discomfort. Limited evidence has been provided regarding risk factor reduction in office environments through standardized methods assessments. The Rapid Office Strain Assessment (ROSA) tool can provide an estimation of risk factor exposure for office workers as a means by which the outcome of interventions can be quantified. PURPOSE: The aim of the study was to evaluate if ROSA scores reflect changes in risk factors after an ergonomics intervention among office workers. METHODS: Office workers (n = 60) were divided into two groups. The experimental group received a workstation intervention and the control group received no intervention. Changes in ROSA scores were compared before and after the intervention in both groups. RESULTS: Statistically significant reductions in the ROSA final and section scores occurred after the intervention in the experimental group with (mean reduction of 2.9, 0.8 and 1.6 points for sections A, B and C, respectively). In contrast, no differences were detected in the control group (mean increase of 0.1 point for sections A and C and mean reduction of 0.1 point for Section B). CONCLUSIONS: These findings show that ROSA scores reflect changes in risk factors after an ergonomics intervention in an office environment. Consequently, this tool can be used for identifying and controlling risk factors among computer workers, before and after interventions.

Rapid office strain assessment (ROSA): Cross cultural validity, reliability and structural validity of the Brazilian-Portuguese version.

Forty-three occupational health professionals (observers) and 90 workers were enrolled in this study to perform the cross-cultural adaptation of the Rapid Office Strain Assessment into Brazilian Portuguese (ROSA-Br) and evaluate its psychometric properties. After cross-cultural adaptation, the measurement properties were checked in three stages: study 1: pre-testing (27 observers rated 15 office worker videos), study 2: intra- and inter-observer reliability (26 observers rated 15 office worker videos), and study 3: validity and accuracy of ROSA-Br final scores (90 office workers). For the ROSA scores, acceptable intraclass correlation coefficients were found for 75% and 86% of the intra-observer reliability comparisons for non-trained and trained observers, respectively, and for 100% of the inter-observer reliability comparisons (0.43-0.86). For construct validity, moderate correlations were observed for 70% of the comparisons between ROSA final scores and other ergonomic instruments. Moderate accuracy was observed for a ROSA-Br final score of 6 (AUC [area under the curve] = 0.72, 0.89). Taken together, these results support the use of the ROSA-Br for ergonomic field assessments and research.