Comparison of Weighted and Unweighted Task Load Indices for Single-Site Surgery Tasks

Background: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) a nd Surgery (SURG-TLX) are two subjective workload m easurement instruments. Both instruments provide unweighted andweightedworkload measurements. Weighted TLX easures have seldomly been used byresearchers typically becauseof its high correlation with addedexperimentaltime to collect pairwise weightings. Therefore, theaim of thestudy wa s compare weighted scores each’s sensitivity for demographic experimentalfactors. Methods: Two simulated la paroscopic single site surgery tasks were completedusing four surgicalmethods by 25 participants. Pearson correlations, principle componentanalyses mixed effect models the unweightedandweighted TLXscores across methods. Results: There was correlation(r > 0.950, p < 0.001) betweentheunweighted scores. showed better both experimental factors Conclusion: overall NASA-TLX SURG-TLX differed from their respective even correlation. TLXshowed potentialto discriminate workloadfor single-site ta sks. Future research is needed identify validatea more streamlinedweightingmethodparticularly complex taskslike surgery.