A Comparative Study of NERPA, RULA and LUBA Methods in Predicting the Risk of Upper Limb Musculoskeletal Disorders in the Household Manufacturing Industry

Background and Objective: Work-related upper limb disorders are one of the major causes of disability in industrial workers. The aim of this study was to Comparison of three methods of NERPA, RULA and LUBA in predicting the risk of upper limb musculoskeletal disorders in the household manufacturing industry Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, all employed in the operational sector of a household manufacturing industry, including 346 people, participated in six occupational groups. In order to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders, Nordic General Questionnaire was used. to predict the risk of musculoskeletal disorders in the upper limbs, LUBA, RULA, and NERPA methods were used. Finally, the data related to the real values of musculoskeletal disorders and the risk values predicted by the three mentioned methods were analyzed by Spearman correlation coefficient and kappa agreement coefficient with SPSS Version 25. Results: The correlation between levels of musculoskeletal disorders and predicted risk levels in RULA, NERPA and LUBA methods was 0.701, 0.691 and 0.629 respectively (P <0.05). also, the correlation coefficient of predicted risk levels in RULA with its corresponding risk levels in NERPA and LUBA methods was 0.713 and 0.619, respectively (P <0.05). Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that the best method for predicting the risk of prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among the different examined tasks was RULA method. Finally, it was determined that none of the studied methods had adequate comprehensiveness to assess all of the four risk levels.