Investigation about the satisfaction and effects of furniture used by college students

Abstract

This study investigates the opinion of 51 students of Occupational Therapy, of Federal University of Paraíba about their university chair with fi xed clipboard. It was the resulting from the application of a questionnaire that measured the satisfaction of the object and investigates: comfort, security, adaptability, practicality, suitability to work and appearance of the chair, using a system of a visual analogue scale. Furthermore, we used the Brazilian version of the Nordic Musculoskeletal questionnaire to verify the presence of pain in the body segments related to the use of the chair. About the methodology, we adopt the empirical experimentally research to measure the user satisfaction, because it is a exploratory study that has descriptive elements and quantitative correlational. We use the correlation coeffi cient Person, the Chi-square test and the exact Fisher test, to assess the association between the variables studied. Thus, we realize the importance of detailed structural study related to items of Design / Ergonomics, held by occupational therapists and designers, before the spread of this product on the market. Hence, we recommended to the universities, purchasing furniture with height / tilt and with depth on the clipboard, seat and back.