5.2. Measures
The first version of the Ergonomics Climate Assessment consisted
of 20 parallel items per each of the four core factors (e.g., 10
management commitment for PE and 10 management commitment
for WE), resulting in 80 questions total. Participants were
asked to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed that the
survey statements were accurate for their department on a scale of
1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Pilot testing (results
described below) allowed us to reduce the Ergonomics Climate
Assessment to a 40-item measure that was used in the subsequent
surveys. All survey items are provided in the supplementary
materials.
To measure self-reported pain, individuals were also asked if
they had experienced any work-related pain in the past 12 months
in nine different areas of their body. Each of these nine items was a
dichotomous variable recorded as yes (1) or no (0), and a total pain
score (ranging from 0 to 9) was calculated by summing the number
of body parts reported to be in pain. The self-reported pain survey
was similar to other surveys used in epidemiological research
among occupational populations (Dickinson et al., 1992;
Rosecrance et al., 2002).