Force required to roll an office chair and the effect on human behavior - a pilot study
The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the amount of force required to roll an office chair on different flooring surfaces. Secondly, human behaviors such as movement in an office chair and awkward postures were recorded in an attempt to determine if there was a correlation between force required to roll an office chair and human behaviors.
The least amount of force necessary to move the chair was obtained by carpet tiles + Vitrazza® glass chair mat with 0 pounds in the chair. The most amount of force necessary to move the chair was obtained by a medium pile rug with 100 pounds added to the chair.
Fewer awkward postures were recorded on the flooring surfaces that required less foot pounds to move the chair both for lateral trunk flexion and forward trunk flexion.
More mini-movement breaks were recorded on the flooring surfaces that required less foot pounds to move the chair.
The foot pound force required to move an office chair appears to be correlated with how many awkward postures a person uses and also inversely correlated with how many mini-movement breaks a person utilizes. For example, 34% decrease in foot pound force to move an office chair on a Vitrazza® glass chair mat versus a plastic chair mat over carpet tiles resulted in a 69% decrease in awkward postures.
Changing the flooring surface in an office space is an engineering control (not requiring a change in habits), demonstrated by this pilot study to have a natural effect in changing behaviors.