A PILOT JOB-STUDY OF AGE-RELATED CAUSES OF DIFFICULTY IN LIGHT ENGINEERING

A pilot job-study was made of 853 machinists (mostly skilled) employed in a precision light-engineering shop. Fifteen factors were rated independently by two investigators. Subsequently, four factors relating to the environment and one relating to pacing, were discarded because of lack of variation in this particular shop, as also were four relating to physical movement which required detailed measurement over a longer period. Of the six remaining, four appeared to be age-related (accuracy required, size of detail, kind of measuring instrument used and form of instructions) in the sense that the more difficult or severe the factor the younger were the individuals involved. Some tentative conclusions on the usefulness of this kind of study are given