Analytic hierarchy process to assess occupational risk for shoulder and neck pain

Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a decision making algorithm developed by Dr. Saaty. This paper looks at AHP as a tool to determine relative measures of significance and assess priority weights for different risk categories of shoulder and neck pain (SNP). SNP is one of the important usculoskeletal disorder that is frequent and most prevalent pain complaint in the general population. The importance of decisions in SNP is related to type of occupation or activity. In this paper, the identified risk factors for SNP are broadly categorized into mechanical, physical and psychosocial factors. Since the array of risk factors within each category may have tremendous variability from case to case, a viable means for evaluating and finding some degree of significance of the risk factors are necessary. AHP analysis does this in SNP and used as decision-support system (DSS). (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.