We investigated the status of fatigue in a cohort of about 300 citrus fruits farmers in western Japan. The Fatigue Questionnaire for Farmers developed by the Rural Life Research Institute in Tokyo was used in this study. The severity of fatigue was assessed with the fatigue scale for the Questionnaire. The major results obtained were as follows;1. Fatigue scores at the farming season were not so high. It was assumed that the amount of agricultural work was small at that year because the citrus fruits crop was below average.2. The scores of fatigue, labor burden, satisfactory and health priority of the subjects at the farming season were not much high in comparison with those of the slack season. However, the fatigue situation indicated different tendencies between the male and female subjects.3. Comparison among three surveys including this study on farmers producing different agricultural products showed different fatigue situations.4. Forty percent of the questionnaires recovered could not be used for this analysis because of unanswered items. It was suggested that there is need of developing a questionnaire easier to answer for subjects.
Fatigue <1> ; FARMERS ; Seasons ; Questionnaires ; Japan

A follow-up study with multivariate analysis examined the relations of methods for selecting students, performance after admission, and scores on the national examinations for medical technologists and for nurse practitioners. The subjects were 247 students who had entered the division of laboratory medicine at the School of Allied Health Sciences, Yamaguchi University, from 1995 through 2000 and 484 students who had entered the division of nursing during the same period. Scores on examinations at the School of Allied Health Sciences and on national professional examinations did not differ between students who had been admitted on the basis of recommendations from high school principals (including an interview) and students who had been admitted on the basis of an open entrance examination (also including an interview). However, questions remained about the legitimacy of the high school records of students admitted on the basis of recommendations from high school principals but not of students admitted on the basis of an open entrance examination. Furthermore, the relevance of the interview during the open entrance examination for medical technologists and nurses was not recognized. In addition, for medical technology students who had been admitted on the basis of open entrance examinations, we found that scores on the national examination were correlated with the scores on the entrance examination and with their grades at the School of Allied Health Sciences.