Pain and Prejudice Does Collecting Information From the Standpoint of Exposed Workers Improve Scientific Examination of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders?

• Published in: International journal of health services Vol. 46; no. 3; pp. 465 - 482
• Main Author: Messing, Karen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA Sage Publications, Inc 01.07.2016; SAGE Publications
• Subjects: Data Collection - methods; Evidence-Based Medicine; Female; Humans; Male; Musculoskeletal Diseases - prevention & control; Occupational Diseases - prevention & control; Occupational Exposure - statistics & numerical data; Occupational Health; Pain - prevention & control; Quebec - epidemiology; The Need to Have Workers’ Perspectives in the Production of “Objective Sciences” in Occupational Health
• ISSN: 0020-7314; 1541-4469
• DOI: 10.1177/0020731415595337

The meaning, feasibility, and importance of scientific objectivity have been debated among public health scientists. The debate is particularly relevant to occupational health, because of frequent opposition between employer and worker interests. This article suggests that the concept of standpoint (J. Eakin) may be more useful than that of objectivity in framing discussion of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Studies done from a “worker” standpoint can, for example, investigate and characterize environmental risk factors for work-related musculoskeletal disorders, while studies from an “employer” standpoint may concentrate on identifying individual workers likely to report work-related musculoskeletal disorders or those for whom consequences of work-related musculoskeletal disorders are more severe. Within “worker” standpoints, a distinction between “high-prestige worker” and “lower-prestige worker” standpoints can be identified in the current scientific debate about the health costs and benefits of prolonged standing vs prolonged sitting at work. Contact with workers, particularly lower-prestige workers, is critical to developing and sustaining a worker-based standpoint among researchers in occupational health. This contact can be facilitated by formal collaborations between universities and unions or other community groups.