ABSTRACT
It is estimated that by the turn of the century at least two out of every three people who work will use a VDU (Bentham 1991). The potential costs of computer use related health problems are therefore immense. Sharma (1996) presented the results of a survey conducted amongst staff and students of the School of Computer Studies at the University of Leeds and computer users employed by a large newspaper in India. The results indicated that many users were suffering, or had suffered from health problems at some time. Most importantly, with regard to the work described in this paper the results showed that most users felt that they did not know enough about the subject of health and safety and that more could be done to inform them. The starting point of the experiment described in this paper is the observation that users had a variety of preferences for the techniques which could be employed to educate them about health and safety problems. The two most popular suggestions made were firstly, to use an introductory lecture and secondly, to distribute information in a variety of formats. In addition to these suggestions it was agreed that it would be useful to assess the effect of an ‘ideal working environment’.
