Comparative reliability of different instruments used to measure the severity of musculoskeletal disorders in office workers

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The accuracy of instruments such as questionnaires and the goniometer are critical for measuring the severity of musculoskeletal disorders among office workers.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the reliability of the Cornell questionnaire, goniometer and Borg questionnaire, which are commonly used instruments to assess the severity of musculoskeletal disorders in office workers.

METHODS: One hundred twenty healthy office workers, body mass: 87.1 ± 10.3 (kg), age: 27 ± 5.1 (years), height: 1.78 ± 0.16 (m), (mean ± SD), who had at least 1 year of experience in office working, were chosen randomly. A plastic goniometer (30" height) was used three times to measure the range of motion in the neck, hip, knee and shoulder area, with a period of one hour between measurements to evaluate the test-retest accuracy. The Cornell questionnaire was used to measure the severity of musculoskeletal disorders and the Borg scale was used to measure perceived exertion. The questionnaires were filled out twice with a gap of 2 weeks between measurements.

RESULTS: The Inter-class Correlation Co-efficient (ICC) indicated that all instrument sub-scales showed high levels of repeatability. The ICC coefficient was (0.805–0.954, p <0.001) for the Borg scale, (0.785–0.978, p <0.001) for the goniometer and (0.883–0.975, p <0.001) for the Cornell questionnaire.

CONCLUSIONS: The Cornell questionnaire, goniometer and Borg questionnaire all exhibit high reliability when used for the evaluation of the severity of musculoskeletal disorders in office workers.