An Instrumented Workstation to Evaluate Weight-Bearing Distribution in the Sitting Posture

Area of Science:

• Ergonomics
• Biomechanics
• Occupational Health

Background:

• Prolonged sitting can lead to health risks due to inadequate weight-bearing support.
• Body weight distribution in sitting involves a closed support system (seat, backrest, floor, work surface).

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an ergonomic sitting workstation for continuous weight-bearing measurement.
• To assess the workstation's reproducibility, criterion-related validity, and sensitivity.

Main Methods:

• Developed an ergonomic workstation to measure weight-bearing at multiple points (seat, chair, backrest, work surface, floor).
• Evaluated measurement properties using rigid bodies (1-30 kg) and participant weights.

Main Results:

• Rigid body tests: reproducibility < 0.050 kg variation, validity errors < 5%.
• Participant tests: no significant differences in repeated measures (p ≥ 0.40), validity errors < 2% of body weight.
• Sensitivity analysis showed statistically significant changes (p = 0.007).

Conclusions:

• The developed ergonomic sitting workstation is reliable, valid, and sensitive.
• This workstation is suitable for future ergonomic studies on sitting posture evaluation.