The investigation of intra-rater and inter-rater agreement in Assessment of Repetitive Task (ART) as an ergonomic method

Abstract

Introduction: Intra-rater and inter-rater assessment is a reliable method to determine the correlation between various observation results made by the same rater and between the observations of a rater and his/her colleagues. This study was intended to investigate intra-rater and inter-rater agreement in ART method, which is an ergonomic method to assess repetitive tasks. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 to assess body postures of 14 tasks in marquetry work via ART posture analysis method. Data were analyzed using SPSS 11 and Excel software. Results: For rater 1, ICC was 0.84 and for rater 2, it was 0.99. Inter-rater ICC value in the first assessment was 0.87 and in the second one, after a week, was 0.75. The results revealed that intra-rater agreement for rater 2 was better than that for rater 1 and inter-rater agreement was acceptable according to the ICC values. Discussion and conclusion: According to the research results, there was a relatively appropriate correlation for inter-raters and intra-raters in ART method. In order to improve intra-rater and inter-rater agreement, it is recommended that the assessment take place with both raters present in workplace and in addition to applying direct observational techniques, the body postures of the subjects be photographed while doing the tasks.