Effects of Video Display Terminals in a Business Office

Abstract

A self-administered questionnaire was completed by 211 workers in a business office who used video display terminals (VDTs) to do their work and by 148 control subjects who did the same job using paper documents instead of VDTs. The groups exhibited few differences in the likelihood and intensity of on-the-job physical discomfort, and no differences in the perception of discomfort that lingered after work. Almost identical proportions of subjects in the two groups reported that their vision had grown worse recently. Differences were found in job satisfaction and concerns about job security, but most of these favored VDT users. The use of an intermediate standard of comparison showed that the visual quality of VDT displays was preferred to that of the paper documents they replaced. The results confirm and extend the findings of the author's earlier study of telephone operators and show that VDTs need not be unusually potent sources of discomfort and disaffection among office workers.