Abstract
Ergonomists have long recommended user adjustable furniture for office workers. A majority of the recommendations have been based upon anthropometric models of economically “correct” postures. Research validation of these proposals is sparse, and those that have been conducted are predominantly laboratory oriented. This research observed the use of adjustable furniture in a field setting. Three questions were addressed: 1) what are the preferred settings when the equipment has been used for a length of time?; 2) do people change the settings?; and 3) how do these measures relate to anthropometric data? The offices of 91 workers were measured covertly. Twenty one offices were measured once, 41 twice, and 29 three times. All the offices had an adjustable VDT stand with independent height and angle adjustments for both the keyboard and display. Seat height had a mean and standard deviation of 20.0 and 0.85 inches. The height of the home row of the keyboard had a mean of 29.1 and a standard deviation of 1.2 inches. For the display surface the mean and standard deviation were 29.7 and 1.3 inches. In terms of repeated measures, 62.9% of the chair heights, 57.1 % of the keyboard heights, and 91.4% of the display heights did not change. Of the observed changes, 90% were between 0.25 in and 0.75 inches. None of the observed heights correlated well with stature, seated eye height, or popliteal length. One correlation was 0.32, all others were less than 0.20. The results are similar to other published data in that the measured settings are much higher than anthropometric models would predict. More significantly, they do not match the new ANSI guideline nor the proposed CSA guideline for adjustable furniture. This suggests that the ergonomic theories behind these recommendations need to be modified to more closely reflect actual use products.
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