Neck discomfort of wheelchair users: effect of neck position
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: To test the hypothesis that wheelchair users experience more discomfort when holding their necks in extended and/or rotated positions than when in their self-selected most comfortable positions (MCPs). METHODS: We studied 20 wheelchair users, first determining their MCPs with the eyes closed. Then, subjects assumed and maintained (for 5 min each) four neck positions in random order: level (L) and elevated (E), both straight ahead of the subject (S) and with the neck rotated (R). We measured neck extension angles (from digital photographs) and neck discomfort (using visual analogue scales [VAS], in %). RESULTS: The mean neck-extension angles were MCP - 2.6 degrees, LS 9.5 degrees, LR 8.1 degrees, ES 23.9 degrees and ER 25.4 degrees (ANOVA p < 0.0001). The mean VAS neck discomfort scores were LS 5.7%, LR 17.4%, ES 24.0% and ER 34.1% (ANOVA p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Sustained extension and rotation of the neck, alone or in combination, increase the neck discomfort of wheelchair users. The MCP for most wheelchair users is straight ahead with the neck slightly flexed, about 11 degrees and 27 degrees more flexed, respectively, than when looking at an average-height sitting or standing person. These findings have implications for wheelchair design, the behaviour of clinicians and wheelchair users, and the built environment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".