• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.556-565
• /
• 2014

Objectives: This study is aimed at inquiring into the grasp of real condition of working environment and improvements by calculating the hypertension distribution consequent on job stress risk and exposure level of alleviating factors. In addition, this study is intending to estimate the hypertension distribution through socio-demographic factors and level of stressors occurring at working environment, such as high workload, low control, low support, job insecurity, long working hours, low income. Methods: This study estimated the hypertension distribution using the tertiary Korean Working Conditions Survey data, and conducted comparative analysis according to the category of individual questionnaire items using odds ratio. Result: As a result of study, it was found that in the event that working environment satisfaction is low and business & an immediate superior's attitudes are negative, the hypertension distribution was high. Particularly, it was found that physical risk factor musculoskeletal risk factor, and mental risk factor in a workplace were all increasing the hypertension distribution. Conclusions: With the aged workers' labor market participation ratio increasing, hypertension could be a major issue in the field of Occupational Safety and Health. Thus, it's necessary that the relevant employer should lower the hypertension distribution through creation of pleasant working environment and inducement of workers to improve in the relations with their superiors. As for the uppermost limit of this study, there is a limit to clarifying the mechanism of hypertension through multivariate statistics analysis because it's difficult to establish causal relationship by individual questionnaire item as the working conditions survey is made by cross-sectional study. In the follow-up research, this study is going to do research on the mechanism of hypertension through questionnaire supplementation and in-depth analysis.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.13 no.10
• /
• pp.4703-4710
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the social maturity of sustained sport-for-all participants on their physical and mental health. The subjects in this study were 190 company employees who were selected by convenience sampling from among the residents in Gangwon Province. The selected office workers continued to participate in sport-for-all programs. After a survey was conduced from November 7 to 25, 2011, the statistical package SPSS WIN 18.0 was employed to analyze the collected data. To find out the general characteristics of the subjects, frequency analysis was made, and the reliability test of the instrument and factor analysis were carried out. Descriptive statistics analysis was made by factor, and multiple regression analysis was utilized to look for connections among their variables. As a result, it's found that the social maturity of the sustained sport-for-all participants made a significant difference to their physical health, and that their social maturity made a significant difference to mental health as well. As sustained sport-for-all participation was found to be correlated to their physical and mental health, office workers should be given a chance to participate in sport-for-all on a long-term basis.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.268-275
• /
• 2013

For marine pollution prevention, Korea Coast Guard has enforced the self-check system on excellent workplace of marine facilities and ships since 2007 as part of the government policy for deregulation of administrative inspection. The self-check system had much effect amid interest from the workplaces and with their participation and cooperation. But the system has become stagnant because KCG has missed the proper timing to reflect the social and environmental change, marine workers' consciousness changes and the transformation of its relevant inner organization in the operation of the system for several years. To accommodate the changes of internal and external environments, this study surveyed 332 workers of ships and marine facilities through questionnaire about the self-check system for marine pollution prevention, reflected on the system, and focused on how to improve the existing system effectively. To increase the effect of self-check system, the enhancement of public relations efforts and improvements in marine pollution control system for ships of 5 gross tons and above are necessary. In addition, for relieving the burdens of business activity and visit inspection by KCG on excellent workplaces of ships and marine facilities, Marine Environment Management Act is needed to be amended so that the self-check system can be reflected in its amendment.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.72-111
• /
• 1996

Background: Group occupational health program by non-for-profit agency, started five years ago, for management of health problems in small and medium sized industries, is one of the measures to cope with limited human and financial resources in occupational health. The program has been rapidly expanding to include 54 participating institutions, private as well as public, all over the country. In spite of its potential impact on health of employees and practice of occupational health in small and medium sized industries, comprehensive evaluation in terms of quality has not been tried. Objectives : The aim of this study are to develop and apply criteria to assess quality of newly developed Korean group occupational health program. Methods : By defining occupational health services, in particular for small and medium sized industries, as one of the primary health care, we included followings as core elements of sound occupational health program; accessibility, continuity, intersectoral collaboration, comprehensiveness, community participation, technical quality, adequacy, focus on preventive services, acceptability, and workers' satisfaction. Again we divided each elements into five major components of national health system infrastructures developed by World Health Organization; development of health resources organized arrangement or resources, delivery of health care, economic support, and management. In turn, we categorized each component into input, process and outcome aspects. After discussions in expert panel, several criteria were selected for evaluation of program. The criteria were modified according to each group of interviewees. Results: We developed five sets of questionnaire that evaluate the quality of 'Group occupational health program'. Conclusion : The refining of the measurement tool and the continuing evaluation process for the 'Group occupational health institute' should be done further.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.256-268
• /
• 2020

Purpose: This study aimed to explore ecological factors and strategies for childhood obesity prevention targeting vulnerable children using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) methodology. Methods: The CBPR was conducted by following basic process steps. Participants were 12 community stakeholders such as community child center directors (n=4), vulnerable children's mothers (n=3), community health center officials (n=2), and lay health advisors (n=4); they were purposively sampled from K municipal county in Seoul, South Korea. The qualitative content analysis was performed to explore main themes of the ecological factors and strategies by using data obtained from 5 times of focus group interview. Results: Twelve ecological factors associated with childhood obesity prevention were identified: Intrapersonal factors including emotional overeating; interpersonal factors including permissive parenting style of children's eating behaviors; organizational factors including social workers' less educational opportunities; and community/policy factors including less government financial support. Four ecological strategies for childhood obesity prevention were addressed: Developing obesity prevention programs targeting vulnerable children' lifestyles; promoting parents' active participation in education; building healthy meal service environments through empowering social workers; and building supportive community environment and securing community resources for child obesity prevention. Conclusion: Our findings may be informative in terms of providing a comprehensive understanding of multi-level ecological barriers against vulnerable children' obesity prevention and, moreover, guiding multi-level strategies for preventing childhood obesity targeting children enrolled in community child centers.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.8 no.9
• /
• pp.105-115
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study is to find the railroad work characteristics that influence stress of workers in the field of Railroad electricity including railroad signaling. After a self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted from Feb. 13 to Mar. 10 of the year 2017, 445 questionnaire copies were analyzed. Objective work characteristics include total working period, current workplace, work type, train service count, train line type, a type of train in charge, failure/accident participation count, work on holidays, and work hours. Subjective work characteristics include work life satisfaction and subjective work intensity. According to bivariate analysis, stress was different depending on all railroad work characteristics. According to multivariate analysis, total working period, train service count, a type of train in charge, work on holidays, work life satisfaction, and subjective work intensity were found to be influential factors. The moderating effect of subjective work characteristics was not found in the relation between objective work characteristics and stress. Therefore, it is necessary for companies to pay attention to the influential factors on stress and manage stress.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.129-139
• /
• 2018

The crowdsourcing software development (CSD) is growing rapidly in the open call format in a competitive environment. In CSD, tasks are posted on a web-based CSD platform for CSD workers to compete for the task and win rewards. Task searching and assigning are very important aspects of the CSD environment because tasks posted on different platforms are in hundreds. To search and evaluate a thousand submissions on the platform are very difficult and time-consuming process for both the developer and platform. However, there are many other problems that are affecting CSD quality and reliability of CSD workers to assign the task which include the required knowledge, large participation, time complexity and incentive motivations. In order to attract the right person for the right task, the execution of action plans will help the CSD platform as well the CSD worker for the best matching with their tasks. This study formalized the task assignment method by utilizing different situations in a CSD competition-based environment in artificial intelligence (AI) planning. The results from this study suggested that assigning the task has many challenges whenever there are undefined conditions, especially in a competitive environment. Our main focus is to evaluate the AI automated planning to provide the best possible solution to matching the CSD worker with their personality type.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.216-221
• /
• 2014

Background: Mental health complaints are quite common in health care employees and can have adverse effects on work functioning. The aim of this study was to evaluate an e-mental health (EMH) approach to workers' health surveillance (WHS) for nurses and allied health professionals. Using the waiting-list group of a previous randomized controlled trial with high dropout and low compliance to the intervention, we studied the pre- and posteffects of the EMH approach in a larger group of participants. Methods: We applied a pretest-posttest study design. The WHS consisted of online screening on impaired work functioning and mental health followed by online automatically generated personalized feedback, online tailored advice, and access to self-help EMH interventions. The effects on work functioning, stress, and work-related fatigue after 3 months were analyzed using paired t tests and effect sizes. Results: One hundred and twenty-eight nurses and allied health professionals participated at pretest as well as posttest. Significant improvements were found on work functioning (p = 0.01) and work-related fatigue (p < 0.01). Work functioning had relevantly improved in 30% of participants. A small meaningful effect on stress was found (Cohen d = .23) in the participants who had logged onto an EMH intervention (20%, n = 26). Conclusion: The EMH approach to WHS improves the work functioning and mental health of nurses and allied health professionals. However, because we found small effects and participation in the offered EMH interventions was low, there is ample room for improvement.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.12 no.9
• /
• pp.285-293
• /
• 2021

This study is a second analysis of the 7th Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families. And, it is a descriptive survey research for comparing parental and health characteristics of 2 groups of workers and non-workers. For this, it has used crossover analysis and logistic regression analysis with the subjects of mothers of preschoolers - of 697 females in total, aged between 19 and 64. Based on the result of the logistic regression analysis, we have discovered a few factors inducing the females to participate in more economic activities. The factors are as follows : baby sitters available, the more number of child care centers, the more helps of baby sitting from the females' parents and in-law parents and physical activities less than 3 times a week. In contrast, however, the more preschoolers they have, the less likely they are to take an active part in the economy. Against the backdrop, the government should develop social service systems to encourage various child care services and to foster 'child raising mothers-friendly' environments not only in families but in workplaces. All this is to improve the health characteristics of preschoolers' mothers in a more healthy way' and to strike a balance between work and family.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.266-273
• /
• 2021

Objective: The objective of this study was to suggest improvement methods for investigations and systems through a review of musculoskeletal risk factor investigation reports conducted in the workplace. Methods: A total of 34 reports on musculoskeletal risk factor investigations were reviewed. To confirm the appropriateness of the evaluation, reevaluation was conducted through a field investigation using other evaluation tools. In order to understand the effectiveness of the improvement plan, a survey was conducted with those in charge of tasks with ergonomic burdens. Results: As a result of performing a field survey using the work sampling method recommended by the KOSHA (Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency) for ten tasks, eight tasks were determined to pose an ergonomic burden. When 30 tasks were evaluated with RULA (rapid entire body assessment), 90% of them were evaluated at a higher level than the results of the workplace survey. Among the improvement measures, only 36% of the field workers affirmed them, and in only 19% of the workplaces were actual improvements made. Conclusions: In order to improve the ergonomic investigation system for risk factors in the ergonomic burden task, it is necessary to secure the objectivity of the evaluation performed by the institution and enable the active participation of workers in improvement activities.