ABSTRACT
Interest in subjective aspects of physical work has increased during the last decades. One main reason for this is the improvement in rating methods designed to measure perceptual attributes. Another reason is the increased understanding of how important it is to listen to the worker who is doing the job. At the beginning of the last century, it was common to simply select individuals for a demanding task, instead of changing and adapting the task to the individual. This approach caused a lot of problems because individuals differ in terms of gender, age, and culture, and because educational and training opportunities are also variable. In the long run, it also led to risks for the individual and expensive medical care. Scaling subjective somatic symptoms and difficulty-of-work tasks are, therefore, important and necessary complements to physical and physiological measurements.
