Participants took part in the study over a 4-week period. For the first two weeks of participation (the "No Break" protocol), subjects performed their usual work, while minimizing the amount of time spent away from their workstation. On the final two days of the "No Break" protocol (Thursday and Friday), participants had MES, discomfort, and word count data measured over the duration of their first 3h of work. They were not allowed to stand up out of their chair during the record ing time, and were asked to keep all unnecessary move ments to a minimum. Their telephone was brought close to their non-dominant side in case its use was absolutely necessary, and in such cases, participants were instructed to hold the phone in their non-dominant hand, and to avoid cradling the phone between their ear and shoulder. Participants were instructed to have amassed an ad equate amount of data entry material to last the entire 3 h of the recording session without requiring them to rise from the chair. MES data were collected continuously throughout each session, whereas the discomfort score data were collected at 40 min intervals throughout the recording session. Word count data were collected at the end of each recording session only, as it was not possible to monitor word counts throughout the recording ses sion without interfering with the individual's work. The data collection was done on two separate days in order to ensure the collection of one adequate MES record from each channel. This was required due to the fact that the MES gains could not be set for each individual channel, but were common between pairs: the neck and back channel had gain settings which ranged from 4392 to 29,512, and the shoulder and forearm channels which ranged from 720 to 3295. By recording the data on two separate days, the first channel of each pair could be optimized on the first day, and then the second channel of the pair could be optimized on the second day, such that amplifier saturation did not compromise the MES signal quality. This strategy allowed for the collection of one gain-optimized data set for each MES channel.