Prolonged sitting in office environments: A scoping review of assessment methods.
Adele Behzad, Eunsik Kim, Joon Chung
Self-report questionnaires and RULA dominate office posture research, while the more precise sensor and camera tools are confined to small lab samples.
The review maps these trade-offs but does not identify a single method that resolves them.
Key findings
1Self-assessment methods were the most commonly used, appearing in 29 of 42 studies (approximately 69.05%), with 12 distinct tools identified and roughly 38% of those studies using author-developed instruments rather than validated questionnaires.
2RULA was the most frequently used observational tool, appearing in 75% (n = 12) of the 16 studies that used observational methods, despite being originally developed for industrial and manufacturing environments rather than office sitting.
3Instrument-based methods had the smallest average sample size (19.63, range 5 to 35), and the ART ANOVA confirmed a significant effect of method type on sample size (p = 0.0002).
Still to come
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What it does not show
This is a scoping review, not a systematic review with quality appraisal, so the 42 included studies were not graded for methodological rigour. The review did not separate studies that developed new assessment tools from those applying established ones, which muddies comparisons of sample size and validation quality. None of the included studies distinguished between remote and in-office work settings, even though hybrid work is now common. Sixty-one percent of the included studies were short-term (under one week), so the cumulative effects of prolonged sitting over months or years are poorly represented. Female participants were significantly overrepresented across the literature, and most studies focused on the 20-to-50 age range, limiting generalisability to other demographics. The review could not access the original tables and figures of the included studies, only the text describing them.
Declared interests
Funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2020-04518) and the University of Windsor Start-up Grant (818140). No industry funding or commercial conflicts of interest are declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume RULA is validated for office sitting. The review notes it was developed for industrial and manufacturing tasks with dynamic, load-bearing movements, and may be less sensitive to the static, low-force postures typical of desk work. ROSA was designed specifically for office environments.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →