Table 4.

Comparison of inter-rater reliability between jobs with low and medium hand activity levels (HAL).

Item	Low HAL job (n = 259 observation pairs)			Medium HAL job (n = 184 observation pairs)
	% agreement	Kappa		% agreement	Kappa
		Coeff.*	95% CI		Coeff.*	95% CI
1. Trunk posture	77.0	0.54	0.45–0.64	71.0	0.51	0.4–0.61
2. Leg posture	94.8	0.92	0.88–0.96	98.3	0.97	0.93–1.0
3. Shoulder/arm elevation†	90.0	0.69	0.55–0.83	84.7	0.62	0.46–0.77
4. Elbow posture†	79.5	0.39	0.19–0.58	79.9	0.41	0.22–0.59
5. Weight in hands†	100	1.0	–	98.3	(–)0.01	–
6. Manual materials handling (MMH)	100	–§	–	100	–§	–
7. MMH action	99.6	0.75	0.40–1.0	97.7	(–)0.01	–
8. Noise level†	32.5	(–)0.45	(–)0.53–(–)0.37	56.4	0.17	0.07–0.27
9. Vibration	99.6	0	–	99.4	0	–
10. Neutral/gross grasp	75.9	0.50	0.39–0.61	66.7	0.34	0.21–0.47
11. Wrist/forearm deviation	76.6	0.52	0.41–0.63	72.1	0.42	0.29–0.56
12. Pinch grip	86.8	0.70	0.61–0.80	88.0	0.74	0.64–0.85
13. Keyboarding	97.9	0.75	0.54–0.96	92.9	0.82	0.72–0.92
14. Hand/forearm contact stress	91.7	0.67	0.53–0.80	80.6	0.53	0.40–0.67
15. Hand/forearm vibration	100	1.0	–	100	–§	–
16. Weight in hands†	99.6	0.80	0.798–0.801	97.6	(–)0.01	–
17. Hand observed	100	1.0	–	100	1.0	–
18. Hand activity level†	75.2	0.58	0.48–0.69	75.4	0.63	0.54–0.73

Note: 95% CI and significance are shown for kappa.

^*p < 0.0001 for each kappa coefficient shown, except for noise level (p = 0.0015) in the medium HAL job and others.

(p > 0.88 each) such as vibration (no. 9) in the low HAL job, weight in hands (no. 5 and no. 6), MMH action and vibration (no. 9) in the medium HAL job.

^†Ordinal variable for which the weighted kappa coefficient was calculated.

^§Undefined (zero in the denominator).