M. Ramadan, Sultan N Al-Tayyar, Mohammed H. Alhaag, A. T. Soliman, A. E. Abdelgawad
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Unsuitable schoolbags may stress the spine and promote poor body posture, particularly for school students. Global recommendations have suggested that schoolbag weight must not exceed 10% of a healthy student's body mass, which would need continuous monitoring and enforcement.
OBJECTIVES
The present study presents a comparison between an ergonomically designed schoolbag, which helps reduce the potential effects of carrying a load, and a commercial one.
METHODS
A total of 30 healthy male students were recruited for this experiment. Independent variables determined were schoolbag type (ergonomically designed and commercial schoolbags) and three load levels based on body mass percentage (i.e., 10%, 15%, and 20% of body mass). Heart rate variability (HRV) and body discomfort rating were then measured.
RESULTS
Our results showed that the developed schoolbag promoted enhanced subjective measures and HRV response at 15% and 20% of body mass. Participants who wore the developed schoolbags experienced significantly lesser neck, shoulder, upper and lower trunk discomfort than those who wore the traditional ones. Changing the load percentage from 10% to 15% caused an increase in heart rate among participants carrying a commercial schoolbag but a decrease in heart rate among those carrying the developed schoolbag.
CONCLUSIONS
The findings presented herein suggest introducing strategies for reducing the potential impact of load carrying through the combined effect of new educational inventions and policy changes.
期刊介绍:
Cognition, Technology & Work focuses on the practical issues of human interaction with technology within the context of work and, in particular, how human cognition affects, and is affected by, work and working conditions.
The aim is to publish research that normally resides on the borderline between people, technology, and organisations. Including how people use information technology, how experience and expertise develop through work, and how incidents and accidents are due to the interaction between individual, technical and organisational factors.
The target is thus the study of people at work from a cognitive systems engineering and socio-technical systems perspective.
The most relevant working contexts of interest to CTW are those where the impact of modern technologies on people at work is particularly important for the users involved as well as for the effects on the environment and plants. Modern society has come to depend on the safe and efficient functioning of a multitude of technological systems as diverse as industrial production, transportation, communication, supply of energy, information and materials, health and finance.