Title: Effect of individual and work parameters on musculoskeletal health of manual agriculture workers

Authors: Rahul Jain; M.L. Meena; G.S. Dangayach; A.K. Bhardwaj

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, J.L.N. Marg, Jaipur – 302017, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, J.L.N. Marg, Jaipur – 302017, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, J.L.N. Marg, Jaipur – 302017, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, J.L.N. Marg, Jaipur – 302017, India

Abstract: Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are a major work-related issue for farmers. The aim of the current research is to find out the occurrence and risk factors for MSDs in the manual agriculture workers. A sample of Indian workers was surveyed (N = 138). An information theory method was investigated to determine the comparative feature of mathematical models for a specified group of data collected on MSDs, individual and work parameters. The result from the Akaike information criterion analysis used further to select a model of the extreme fit. Risk Factors associated with MSDs in the final model with 95% bootstrap contained age (40.5%), gender (24.5%), education (5.2%), income satisfaction (10.6%), tool satisfaction (8.4%) and smoking (10.8%). Problem attentions to MSDs are identical in developed and newly industrialised countries. However, factors are not exact similar. Interventions targeted at manual activities for degrading risk factors that furnish to MSDs are necessary.

Keywords: agricultural systems; information theory; musculoskeletal disorders; R statistical software.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2019.099776

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2019 Vol.32 No.1, pp.56 - 70

Received: 02 Jul 2016
Accepted: 03 Sep 2017
Published online: 22 May 2019 *

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