OBJECTIVETo develop a draft questionnaire (China Musculoskeletal Questionnaire, CMQ) for evaluating of musculoskeletal workload and associated potential hazardous working conditions as well as musculoskeletal symptoms of workers in Sitting Posture.

METHODSMulti-methods, which include the reviewing references, the summarizing results of preliminary studies, the reviewing ergonomic tools, the consulting experts and occupational health workers and the interviewing or discussing with individual workers in sitting posture, were used in developing item pool. The experts and epidemiologists of occupational health scored the importance of every single item in the item pool, and then the survey and sampling were carried out in 325 workers of sitting posture who completed the questionnaire. On the basis of these data, the methods including experts scoring, item analysis, Cronbach's α analysis and factor analysis were synthetically used to select the reliable items which consisted of the formal questionnaire.

RESULTSThe standard of the CMQ, which consists of 34 items on musculoskeletal workload and associated potentially hazardous working conditions, can be divided into nine indices (dynamic loads, static loads, repetitive loads, forces-exertion, prolong time, climatic factors, vibration, position and ergonomic environmental factors).

CONCLUSIONThe CMQ possesses good content validity, and the items of CMQ are divergent, reliable and typical. However, the reliability and validity of CMQ should be validated.