Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) is a quick observation method of posture analysis. RULA has been
used to assess children’s computer-related posture, but the reliability of RULA on a paediatric population
has not been established. The purpose of this study was to investigate the inter-rater and intra-rater
reliability of the use of RULA with children. Video recordings of 24 school children were indepen-dently viewed by six trained raters who assessed their postures using RULA, on two separate occasions.
RULA demonstrated higher intra-rater reliability than inter-rater reliability although both were moderate
to good. RULA was more reliable when used for assessing the older children (8e12 years) than with the
younger children (4e7 years). RULA may prove useful as part of an ergonomic assessment, but its level of
reliability warrants caution for its sole use when assessing children, and in particular, younger children.