Back pain study recognised for worldwide relevance

An ergonomics doctoral student who studied back pain in coal miners has won a prestigious international award for her research.

Baiduri Widanarko was awarded the Triennial KU Smith Award for the best student research paper by the International Ergonomics Association.

The award worth US$3000 ($3,800NZ) is given for the best paper published in a peer-reviewed journal over the last three years.

Ms Widanarko, who is studying her PhD at Massey University’s Centre for Ergonomics, Occupational Safety and Health (CErgOSH), will also present her findings to an audience of 2,000 people at the Ergonomics World Congress in Brazil in February next year.

Her paper entitled Interaction between physical, psychosocial, and organisational work factors for low back symptoms and its consequences amongst Indonesian coal mining workers will be published in the journal Work.

Professor Stephen Legg, director of CErgOSH in the School of Management and one of her PhD supervisors, says the award recognises the pinnacle of worldwide research in this discipline.

“Baiduri’s study is the first to examine interactions amongst different types of risk factors for low back symptoms in an industrially developing country.”

“Her findings imply that efforts to reduce lower back symptoms and its consequences should not only address physical factors but also psychosocial factors such as stress,” says Professor Legg, who co-authored the paper.

Ms Widanarko surveyed 673 coal miners in Indonesia to find out how the level of physical work and psychosocial factors – such as effort, reward and stress – affected the workers.

She found permanent workers were more likely to report low back symptoms and had higher rates of absenteeism. Furthermore, night shift work increased the risk of lower back problems.

Ms Widanarko, a lecturer at the University of Indonesia, is currently studying at Massey through a three-year scholarship from the Indonesian Department of National Education and is based at the centre on the Manawatu campus.

As well as Professor Legg, her other co-authors were Associate Professor Mark Stevenson from Massey’s Institute of Veterinary and Biosciences and Dr Jason Devereux of the Department of Psychology, University College London.