Investigating Intra-Rater and Inter-Rater Reliability of Three Upper-Limb Risk Assessment Methods

There are several methods for assessing the risk of upper-limb disorders in occupational health studies. The goal of present study is to determine the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of three risk assessment methods of SI, OCRA Checklist and ART in repetitive tasks and exposure to upper-limb risk factors. First, 9 raters used SI, OCRA Checklist and ART to assess the physical exposure level of the upper limb in workers 30 tasks with different levels of profession for two assessment periods. In the results of inter-rater reliability using ICC, the risk classifications were ρ = 0.54, ρ = 0.74 and ρ = 0.77 for SI, OCRA Checklist and ART, respectively. And the intra-rater reliability for the final score of the OCRA Checklist, SI and ART methods was κ = 0.59, κ = 0.66 and κ = 0.67, respectively. The inter-rater reliability for risk classification and final score of ART, OCRA Checklist and SI methods using ICC) obtained as moderate to good. However, the overall results showed that the reliability of ART method was higher than two other methods. The findings demonstrated that all three methods are appropriate for assessment in workplaces. These methods should be used based on assessment objectives, rater experience and required time for assessing the tasks.