A Descriptive Study of Turkish University Students' Awareness of Ergonomic Computer Usage

Although computers have many benefits for people, long-term continuous and non-ergonomic usage may lead to a number of health problems, especially vision and posture disorders. Therefore, it is crucial for students to learn and implement ergonomic usage principals. Perhaps, university students are the most at risk users as their access to computer technologies increase due to various technological facilities offered by universities as well as increased free time uncontrolled by parents or relatives. This study aims to explore university students' awareness level of ergonomic computer use. It was designed as a descriptive survey research on a sample of 144 university students attending at a major southwestern university in Turkey. Data were collected through the questionnaire form measuring some demographic characteristics and knowledge about the healthy use of computers. The findings revealed that participating students spent an average of almost two and half hours daily for computer use and most had their own computer. Their knowledge regarding ergonomic computer use was at moderate level on average and significantly higher among those who owned a computer than who did not. On the other hand, it was found to be independent of gender, age and daily time spent on using computer. [For the full proceedings, see ED652261.]