Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334

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Applied Ergonomics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo

Do mechanical tests of glove stiffness provide relevant information relative

to their effects on the musculoskeletal system? A comparison with surface
electromyography and psychophysical methods
Christian Lariviere a, *, Guy Tremblay b, Sylvie Nadeau b, Lot Harrabi b, Patricia Dolez b, Toan Vu-Khanh b,
Jaime Lara a
a
Institut de Recherche Robert-Sauve en Sante et en Securite du Travail (IRSST), 505 boul. De Maisonneuve West, Montreal (Quebec), H3A 3C2 Canada
b
Ecole de technologie superieure (ETS), 1100 Notre-Dame West, Montreal (Quebec), H3C 1K3 Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The main purpose of the present study was to test the construct validity of two mechanical tests of glove
Received 3 October 2008 stiffness using a surface electromyography (SEMG) methodology that would allow estimating the effect
Accepted 21 August 2009 of glove stiffness on forearm muscle activation during a standardized grip contraction. The mechanical
tests [free-deforming multidirectional test (FDMT) and Kawabata Evaluation System for Fabrics (KESF)]
Keywords: were applied on 27 gloves covering a wide range of stiffness. In 30 human subjects, a psychophysical
Flexibility
assessment of these gloves was also carried on in addition to the SEMG test. The results showed that the
Electromyography
sensitivity of the different tests to glove stiffness differences was slightly better for the FDMT (75%
Perceived exertion
Construct validity sensitivity) than for the psychophysical assessment (72%), while the SEMG test showed much lower
sensitivity (1331%, depending on the muscle). The SEMG test was highly correlated to the psycho-
physical assessment (0.880.95, depending on the muscle tested), and the FDMT (0.880.94) and KESF
(0.770.86) mechanical tests, showing the construct validity of mechanical tests, particularly for the
FDMT. It was concluded that mechanical tests provide relevant information relative to the effect of glove
stiffness on the musculoskeletal system of the forearm.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction of view, they dont necessarily mimic gloves as used at work. In

Though gloves are needed to protect workers from hand injuries
(abrasions, cuts, punctures, etc.), they also have adverse effects on
task time and precision, tactility, strength, dexterity and range of
motion (Bishu and Muralidhar, 1999). The fact that gloves often
impair hand performance and productivity makes workers less
inclined to use them and consequently more prone to injury (Bishu
and Muralidhar, 1999). Thus, reliable methods to characterize glove
stiffness are of paramount importance to glove manufacturers so as
to help them improve their products. Methods to characterize glove
stiffness are of paramount importance.
Mechanical methods have been developed for characterizing
lm and fabric stiffness (International Organization for Stan-
dardization (ISO), 1982; Kawabata, 1980) but most of them are
based on uniaxial bending deformations. However, even though
these tests measure glove stiffness in a purely mechanical point
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 514 288 1551x217; fax: 1 514 288 6097.
E-mail address: lariviere.christian@irsst.qc.ca (C. Lariviere).
line with this reasoning, the ASTM D 4032 standard (American
Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), 1994) makes use of
a circular bend procedure, thus creating multidirectional defor-
mations. Still, all mechanical methods can be criticized because
none of them actually takes into account what occurs at the
hand/glove interface, which likely involves a complex interplay
between the material stiffness, a more or less glove tting and
the adherence on the skin. Consequently, it would be of interest
to test to which extent mechanical methods give relevant
information relative to the effect of glove stiffness on the
musculoskeletal system. In other words, what about the
construct validity of mechanical tests? Construct validity indi-
cates the extent to which the content of the test samples the
subject matter or situation about which conclusions are to be
drawn. This has not been substantiated yet because mechanical
methods have never been contrasted to human-based
assessments.
Recently, the free-deforming multidirectional test (FDMT) has
been proposed, based on ASTMs testing principle, but with a larger
gap between the probe head and the orice edge and a more

0003-6870/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2009.08.002
 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334 327

relevant probe shape (Harrabi et al., 2008). This test is assumed to 2. Methods
better mimic the behavior of gloves and has been validated using
a psychophysical assessment of glove stiffness in human subjects 2.1. Subjects
(Harrabi et al., 2008). Interestingly, a higher correlation (r 0.93)
was obtained for this new test than for uniaxial tests based on Thirty healthy subjects (15 men and 15 women) aged between
Kawabata Evaluation System for Fabrics (KESF) (r 0.760.79) 20 and 55 years were selected on a voluntary basis (Table 1). The
(Harrabi et al., 2008). Psychophysical assessment is undoubtedly of exclusion criteria were: presence of a systemic or degenerative
value as a criterion to validate purely mechanical methods. disease or neurological disorder, musculoskeletal problem or
However, although the psychophysical assessment might reect congenital malformation of the upper limbs, a positive response to
the muscle effort as measured with a dynamometer or surface the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire or PARQ (Thomas
electromyography (EMG) (Grant et al., 2006), it can also be inu- et al., 1992). An additional exclusion criterion was used to eliminate
enced by many other factors (Capodaglio, 2002) that are not the subjects with too small hands (palm circumference <15.2 cm or
necessarily relevant to glove stiffness. Considering the inherent a hand length <16 cm) for the xed grip span forced by the
variability of measures carried out on human subjects, this handgrip dynamometer. These threshold values come from a stan-
subjective method might not be as sensitive as a biomechanical dardized normative test (BSI Standards no 001785, 1994) developed
assessment. The measure of grip strength with a handgrip dyna- to characterize the vibration attenuation of gloves (ISO/CEN 10819,
mometer has been used frequently to assess the biomechanical 1996) and requiring a comparable dynamometer (diameter: 4 cm)
effects of glove stiffness. Five to 30% decrease in grip strength to the one used in the present study (diameter: 4.4 cm). The
generally observed depending on the gloves (Mital et al., 1994; Rock anthropometric measures of the hand of our subjects are provided
et al., 2001), which substantiates the sensitivity of this method. in Table 1 (Lariviere et al., 2004). All subjects were informed of the
However, while this type of biomechanical assessment is straight- experimental protocol and of its potential risks and gave written
forward, it requires the production of several maximal voluntary consent prior to their participation, in compliance with the rules of
contractions (MVC), which necessitates well-motivated healthy the research ethics board of lEcole de technologie superieure.
subjects to obtain valid and reliable measures. More importantly,
without a long lasting experimental protocol allowing muscle
recovery between contractions, it cannot be applied on many 2.2. Study design and procedures
gloves without introducing the confounding factor of muscular
fatigue. Subjects had to perform two identical measurement sessions,
A biomechanical assessment based on surface electromyog- separated by a two-week period, so as to evaluate the testretest
raphy (SEMG) has been proposed to provide relevant information reliability of the EMG measurements (results reported elsewhere
about the internal loading generated by the forearm muscles (Vu-Khanh et al., 2008)). The measurement protocol included the
during submaximal (35% of strength) handgrip tasks (Lariviere following steps: (1) reading, completing and signing the consent
et al., 2004). The underlying principle of this test is to compare form and PARQ questionnaire, (2) anthropometric measurements,
the EMG activation of forearm muscles with and without (3) psychophysical assessment, (4) surface electrodes positioning,
different gloves when applying the same external load as (5) maximum voluntary contractions, (6) two step contractions
controlled by a handgrip dynamometer. Indeed, increased gloves without a glove, (7) two step contractions for each of the 28
stiffness leads to more muscle activation required to produce the experimental conditions (27 gloves 1 bare hand control condi-
same grip load, as observed for gloves with very divergent stiff- tion), (8) two step contractions without a glove.
ness (Lariviere et al., 2004). However, the sensitivity of this test to This protocol includes four additional bare hand trials (steps 6
differentiate more subtle glove stiffness differences remains to be and 8) so as to assess (using EMG fatigue indices) the potential
determined. EMG measures has several advantages: (1) many gradual onset of muscular fatigue in the course of the protocol
gloves can be assessed without undue muscle fatigue provided (results reported elsewhere (Vu-Khanh et al., 2008)). The presen-
that minimal rest periods are allowed and consequently (2) many tation order of the 28 experimental conditions was randomized.
trials can be averaged to increase the reliability of muscle acti- However, in order to control for the possible carry-over effects
vation estimates (Lariviere et al., 2004), (3) several muscles can (learning, fatigue) from one condition to another, the order of
be assessed, thus allowing to identify which muscles are the most experimental conditions (27 gloves 1 bare hand) determined for
responsive to glove stiffness effects (Lariviere et al., 2004) in the each subject was kept the same as the one determined at the rst
case of a power grip. session. Only the psychophysical assessment was performed once
The main purpose of the present study was to test the (session 1). The rst measurement session lasted approximately
construct validity of two mechanical tests using an SEMG-based 3.5 h, while the second lasted about 2.5 h.
biomechanical test that would allow to estimate the effect of Finally, the same gloves (however using other samples) were
glove stiffness on forearm muscle activation during a standard- also assessed independently (by other experimenters) with the two
ized grip contraction. To achieve this goal, the sensitivity of
Table 1
mechanical, psychophysical and electromyographical tests was Demographic and anthropometric characteristics of the subjects.
rst tested to make sure that each test has some relation with
Women (n 15) Men (n 15) T-test
glove stiffness. Then, construct validity was tested by carrying
P value
out the relationship between the different tests. More speci- Mean SD Mean SD
cally, 27 gloves covering a wide range of stiffness were assessed Age (year) 27.8 9.5 24.9 4.9 0.2641
using two mechanical (Kawabata, 1980; Harrabi et al., 2008), one Body height (m) 1.64 0.06 1.83 0.09 <0.0001
Body weight (kg) 63.5 13.1 83.1 19.8 0.0042
SEMG (Lariviere et al., 2004) and one psychophysical assessment.
Palm width 8.5 0.5 10.1 1.2 <0.0001
The latter two methods were accounting for the hand/glove Palm length 9.8 0.4 11.7 1.2 <0.0001
interface, allowing the new FDMT (Harrabi et al., 2008) to be Palm circumference 19.1 0.9 23.4 2.4 <0.0001
evaluated in this respect, in comparison with another mechanical Hand length 17.3 0.9 20.1 1.8 <0.0001
method based on uniaxial bending deformations (Kawabata, Hand width 9.3 0.7 11.3 1.1 <0.0001

1980). Hand anthropometric measures are (described elsewhere [10]).

328 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334

mechanical tests carried out in another laboratory (Harrabi et al., 2.5. Psychophysical assessment
2008).
The subject had to rank the gloves, according to their stiffness
2.3. Gloves when moving ngers in an unstructured way, so that to classify the
gloves using a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the most exible and 10
A total of 27 pairs of different kinds of gloves was selected out by the stiffest). First, the subject had to try on all the gloves in order to
two of the authors (CL and JL), among the products offered by two rank them according to their stiffness. It allowed identifying the
companies, in order to consider a large range of stiffness (Table 2; two anchoring points of the distribution, i.e. the most exible glove
see more details about their materials elsewhere (Harrabi et al., (level 1) and the stiffest glove (level 10). Then, the subjects were
2008)). asked to try the gloves as many times as they wanted to, so as to
rank them well. In order to allow an iterative evaluation, the gloves
2.4. Mechanical assessments were put in baskets (n 10) that corresponded to the evaluation
made by the subjects (on the scale of 110). It was specied that the
The newly proposed FDMT and the KESF, respectively based on subject could put two or more gloves in one basket if evaluated of
multidirectional and uniaxial deformations, are fully described the same stiffness and that some baskets may contain no glove. The
elsewhere (Kawabata, 1980; Harrabi et al., 2008). Briey, in the time and number of trials for each glove were not restricted. In
FDMT, a probe with a sphericalconical head pushes the glove general, an average of 2030 min was necessary for the subjects to
through an orice drilled in a platform. The forcedisplacement sort the gloves.
data are recorded while the glove positioned palm up and centered
above the orice is pushed through it by the probe travelling at 2.6. SEMG assessment
a constant rate of 100 mm/min. The work corresponding to the rst
10 mm of deformation of the sample is used as a measurement of The whole assessment included maximum voluntary contrac-
the glove stiffness. Five glove samples were measured (for each tions (MVC) as well as step contractions at 35% of the MVC. For all
glove type) to calculate the mean and standard deviation (SD) these tasks, the position of the upper limb was standardized in the
values. following manner: forearm of the dominant hand leaned on the
The KESF includes a measurement of the material stiffness, table, in a semi-pronated position, with the elbow exed to a 120
which is based on a uniaxial bending test (from 2.5 to 2.5 cm1 in angle and the shoulder in a slight abduction position (see Fig. 1).
an arc of constant curvature) along the longitudinal and transversal Additional visual cues (tags) were used to ensure that the position
directions of samples that were taken in the glove palm. The of the subject relative to the tables and the position of the hand on
bending moment required to produce this curvature is continu- the dynamometer would be standardized across the experimental
ously monitored and the bending rigidity is calculated as the slope conditions.
of the bending-moment/curvature relationship. Three glove
samples were measured (for each glove type) to calculate the mean 2.6.1. Maximal voluntary contractions (MVC)
and SD values. Three maximal efforts were performed with the dynamometer
to determine the maximal reference values for grip strength. The
maximum value of the three grip MVCs was retained as the MVC to
Table 2 determine the relative workload during the stiffness test (step
Identication of the 27 selected gloves, their respective thickness and the
corresponding psychophysical results across the subjects.
contractions detailed below). The subject was provided with a real
time visual feedback of the performance and strong verbal
Ciea Model Thicknessb Min Max Mean SD Rank encouragement (Jung and Hallbeck, 2004).
Ansell Neox 9-022 6.4 8 10 9.53 0.63 27 For normalization purpose, maximum amplitude of the EMG
Ansell Snorkel 4-412 3.6 6 10 8.53 1.17 24
signal was also elicited for the following muscles: (1) exor dig-
Ansell Winter Monkey Grip 23-193 6.4 3 9 6.43 1.55 16
Ansell Crusader 42-325 4.5 5 9 6.90 1.42 20 itorum supercialis (FDS), (2) exor carpi radialis (FCR), (3)
Ansell Grab It Safe 28-362 3.4 3 9 6.60 1.81 17 extensor carpi radialis longus (ECR), and (4) extensor digitorum
Ansell Grab It 6-620 4.1 5 9 7.77 1.14 23 (ED) (Lariviere et al., 2004). To do so, two additional maximal
Ansell Golden Grab It 16-300 3.2 3 9 6.87 1.53 19 isometric wrist extension contractions were performed (in addition
Ansell The Duke 70-982 4.4 2 8 4.27 1.41 10
Ansell Seams-Rite 20-115 3.6 2 9 5.47 1.66 12
to the above mentioned grip MVCs), with manual resistance
Ansell Hycron 27-607 2.6 4 9 6.77 1.41 18 provided by the experimenter and with the forearm fully pronated,
Ansell Hyd Tur 52-547 3.7 1 6 3.20 1.16 6 so as to more specically activate ECR and ED muscles. Grip MVCs
Ansell GoldKnit Kevlar 70-225 4.5 1 5 1.73 0.91 2 are known to recruit all the forearm muscles (exors and exten-
Ansell Hyex 11-900 2.0 1 4 2.27 1.01 4
sors). How maximal EMG corresponding to each muscle was
Ansell PowerFlex 80-100 3.6 1 6 3.33 1.06 7
Ansell Canners & Handlers #392 1.1 1 2 1.10 0.31 1 determined is explained later (EMG data processing section). Each
Best Insulated Snowman 2950 8.6 2 10 8.60 1.77 25 MVC consisted of a force building phase lasting 3 s (without jerk-
Best Neo Grab 6780-R 4.8 7 10 9.47 0.73 26 ing) and a holding phase lasting 1 s before relaxing. Two minutes of
Best Neo Hyde 361 3.3 4 10 7.50 1.43 22 rest were allowed between each MVC.
Best Ultraex Nitrile 22-R 2.6 2 10 7.00 1.89 21
Best Natural Rubber Latex HD 55 2.1 1 5 2.83 1.18 5
Best Skinny Dip Aramid 4811 4.3 2 8 4.67 1.47 11 2.6.2. Step contractions
Best Nitri-Pro 7000P 1.7 2 10 5.47 1.85 12 Two 5-s isometric grip contractions at 35% MVC were per-
Best KPG 960 3.7 1 7 3.70 1.29 8 formed, for each experimental condition (n 28: 27 gloves bare
Best The Original Nitri-Flex 4000P 1.7 1 7 3.70 1.56 8
hand control condition), using the real time handgrip force as visual
Best Nitri-Solve 747 1.2 1 4 1.83 0.91 3
Best Cannonball 812 M 3.8 2 9 5.93 1.76 14 feedback. The visual feedback consisted of a vertically moving
Ansell Scorpio 8-352 3.3 1 10 6.17 2.42 15 square target with lower and upper bounds corresponding to
a
Company.
a tolerance limit of 5% of the handgrip strength. After each test,
b
Measured (in mm) at the middle of the palm and includes the two layers (palm the subject had to remove and pull on the glove again and a 60-s
and back side of the hand). rest was allowed.
 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334
Fig. 1. Grip dynamometer (A) and experimental setup used for SEMG test (B). In B, the dynamometer was placed in an upward position on a small table that could be adjusted for
height (not visible on this picture). Also, an electrogoniometer was also used to monitor wrist angles (results not reported here).
2.7. Measurement techniques
2.7.1. Dynamometry
The cylindrical (diameter: 4.4 cm) grip dynamometer (Fig. 1A) is
described elsewhere (Lariviere et al., 2004). Briey, it is composed
of two aluminum pieces separated by two force transducers
measuring normal forces that were summed up before being dis-
played as visual feedback and stored on a hard disk (sampling rate:
1000 Hz). The dynamometer was not attached to the table to
ensure that the generated efforts was in prehension only but the
dynamometers base of support had to be kept at at the same
point on the table to avoid wrist movements.
2.7.2. Electromyography
Four (4) pairs of surface electrodes (B&L Active EMG Electrode
narrow pad spacing, Tustin, CA, USA) were positioned on the main
muscles (dominant arm) involved in gripping tasks (FDS, FCR, ECR,
ED identied above) according to the procedure proposed by Bas-
majian and Blusmenstein (1983). A disposable Meditrace reference
electrode (snap-on type) with gel was placed on the lateral epi-
condyle of the dominant arm. The EMG signals were bandpass
ltered (122700 Hz or 123000 Hz depending on the electrode),
preamplied (gain: between 328 and 356 depending on the elec-
trode) at the recording site and saved on a hard disk (sampling rate:
1000 Hz).
2.8. EMG data processing
The Root Mean Square (RMS) amplitude of the EMG signal was
computed for the entire length of window located within the 35%
targeted area (5%). This value was subsequently normalized for
each individual muscle, according to the following equation:
 
RMS
NRMS  100
RMSmax
where NRMS represents the normalized RMS amplitude and
RMSmax the maximal RMS value collected out of all (n 5) the
maximum voluntary contractions. According to previous ndings
showing differences in the sensitivity and reliability of composite
indices (Lariviere et al., 2004), we also created other EMG indica-
tors by combining different muscles, namely (1) the two exors
(FDSFCR), (2) the two extensors (ECRED), (3) the two main
antagonistic muscles (FDSED) and (4) the average of all four
muscles (X-all). We therefore have 8 EMG indicators (4 muscles 4
muscle combinations) for each experimental condition. Finally, to
329
reduce the data and increase reliability (Vu-Khanh et al., 2008), the
NRMS values were averaged across both trials and both sessions.
For the four bare hand trials introduced to assess the potential
presence of muscle fatigue, spectral analysis (wavelet transform)
was carried out to obtain the instantaneous mean frequency (IMF)
(Karlsson et al., 1999).
2.9. Statistical analyses
To assess the sensitivity of the FDMT to glove stiffness, the 95%
condence interval (95% CI) corresponding to each glove stiffness
index was calculated (mean  2 SD). Two gloves were considered
different if the corresponding CIs did not overlap. This analysis was
not carried out for the KESF test because the number of trials (n 3)
was not the same as for FDMT (n 5), which inuence 95% CIs and
consequently does not allow a fair comparison between these
mechanical tests.
To assess the sensitivity of the psychophysical and EMG
assessments to glove stiffness, repeated measures ANOVAs were
carried out to compare the 28 experimental conditions. The post-
hoc pairwise comparisons were conducted using the Tuckey test.
The number of a posteriori comparisons is obviously very impor-
tant, which is arguable from a statistical perspective. Nevertheless,
this rst-level analysis provides us with a general idea of which
measures are the most sensitive to the different kinds of gloves. To
be more statistically rigorous, other ANOVAs were conducted with
a reduced number of conditions. Five glove categories were created
based on the psychophysical assessment (Table 2): averaged
psychophysical scores in the 12 interval constituted Group 1,
scores in the 24 interval, Group 2 and so on (Group 3: 46 interval;
Group 3: 68 interval; Group 3: 810 interval). Then, within each
group, the best tting glove (i.e. a glove available in the largest
possible number of sizes) was selected, as identied in Table 2. This
allows to better control for the potentially confounding effect of
poor hand tting. According to the FDMT (analyses described in the
previous paragraph), these ve gloves showed different stiffness,
except between G3 and G1G2, which showed less obvious
differences.
To assess the construct validity of the mechanical tests, Pear-
sons correlations were carried out with the averaged (across all
subjects) NRMS scores. The correlations between mechanical and
psychophysical assessments were reported elsewhere (Harrabi
et al., 2008). The mechanical tests were previously converted to
ranks because the raw stiffness indices were non-normally
distributed. Finally, correlations were also carried out between
330 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334
NRMS and psychophysical scores to further help interpreting all the
ndings.
3. Results
3.1. Assessment of muscle fatigue
The four muscles showed an increase (25% RMSmax) of the
NRMS values from the beginning to the end of the SEMG protocol
(bare hand conditions), with only one muscle (ECR) failing to reach
statistical signicance (P 0.069; paired t-test). A signicant
(P 0.046) increase of the IMF was also observed for the ECR.
3.2. Sensitivity of mechanical, psychophysical and SEMG
assessments
The detailed results (stiffness indices and ranking of the 27 glove
models) provided by the FDMT and KESF experiments are reported
elsewhere (Harrabi et al., 2008). The pairwise comparisons of glove
stiffness indices based on 95% CI analyses led to 263 differences out
of 351 comparisons (Fig. 2), which leads to a sensitivity of 75%.
The average rating of each glove, as determined with the
psychophysical assessment, as well as their rank (out of 27), is
reported in Table 2. The ANOVA analysis was signicant (P < 0.001)
and post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed 254 signicant
differences out of 351 comparisons (sensitivity: 72%) (Fig. 3).
Regarding muscle activation estimates, NRMS values ranged
from 20 to 47% across the 28 experimental conditions, with
a muscle activation increase ranging from 16 to 21% (depending on
the muscle) from the bare hand to the stiffest glove condition (Table
3). All ANOVAs (n 8 muscles or muscle combinations) showed
signicant differences (Table 3). The number of signicant post-hoc
pairwise comparisons ranged from 47 (ED or ECR) to 110 (FCR) out
of 351 comparisons (sensitivity: 13% to 31%, respectively), if the
bare hand condition is not considered to compare sensitivity results
Fig. 2. Representation of the pairwise comparisons (using 95% CIs) between the 27 gloves as detected by the free-deforming multidirectional test (n 263 out of 351 comparisons).
The glove conditions were ranked according to the averaged psychophysical results (see Table 2), i.e. from the least rigid to the most rigid one. The Groups 1 through 5 correspond to
subgroups which also include rigidity subcategories obtained by means of the psychophysical assessment (02, 24, 46, 68, 810).
with the psychophysical assessment and the FDMT for which no
bare hand condition was possible. A detailed example is illustrated
in Fig. 4 (signicant pairwise comparisons) and Fig. 5 (NRMS
values) for the muscle showing the greatest sensitivity to glove
stiffness (FCR). Apart from the number of signicant post-hoc
pairwise comparisons, very similar results were observed in all
muscle or muscle combinations, with signicant pairwise
comparisons revealing that the more the glove categories (n 5)
were apart from each other, greater was the number of signicant
differences.
ANOVAs were carried out for EMG NRMS results to compare
gloves selected from ve subgroups according to the psychophys-
ical assessment. Before we describe these results, it is worth noting
that within each subgroup comprising between three and nine
gloves, very few signicant differences were noted (results not
shown). This demonstrates the homogeneity of the gloves in terms
of stiffness within each subgroup. It also supports our approach
which consisted in keeping only one glove (allowing a good t), as
explained in Section 2.9. Again, all ANOVAs (n 8 muscles or
muscle combinations) showed signicant differences (Table 3).
Again, the post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed that it was not
possible to get signicant differences between nearby glove cate-
gories. FCR, FDSFCR and X-all show the greatest sensitivity with
four signicant differences, three of them regarding Group 5 (very
rigid glove).
3.3. Relationship between SEMG and other methods
(psychophysical and mechanical) to assess glove stiffness
The correlations between NRMS values and psychophysical
scores were all statistically signicant and ranged between 0.88
and 0.95 (Table 4). Correlations between NRMS values and the
results from the mechanical tests were also all statistically signi-
cant (Table 4), with higher values for the FDMT (r range: 0.880.94)
than for both unidirectional KESF tests (r range: 0.770.86).
 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334 331

Fig. 3. Representation of the pairwise signicant differences (Tuckey) within the 27 gloves as detected by the psychophysical assessment. The glove conditions were ranked
according to the averaged psychophysical results (see Table 2), i.e. from the least rigid to the most rigid one. The Groups 1 through 5 correspond to subgroups which also include
rigidity subcategories obtained by means of the psychophysical assessment (02, 24, 46, 68, 810). The number of differences was 254 (out of 351 comparisons).

4. Discussion that subjects would perform exion/extension movements (instead

The rst main nding of the present study was that the sensi-
tivity of the different tests to glove stiffness differences was slightly
better for the mechanical tests than for the psychophysical
assessment, while the SEMG test showed much lower sensitivity.
The second main nding was that the SEMG test indices of stiffness
were highly correlated to the FDMT results, while slightly less
correlated to KESF results.
Before discussing these ndings, some limitations to the present
study must be recognized. Only one grip task in a precise upper-limb
posture and at one contraction level (35% MVC) was studied, thus
precluding generalization to work activities other than power grip.
The psychophysical assessment was not carried out using stan-
dardized tasks. However, while moving ngers in a somewhat
unstructured way may appear questionable, there are not many
ways to do it in terms of movements and applied forces. We assumed
of lateral exion) and would avoid pressing the ngers against the
palm. The investigator (G.T.) observed thats exactly what was done.
Also, the psychophysical results may not be generalized to older
subjects whom are known to have less sensitive mechanoreceptors
(Shaffer and Harrison, 2007), although this may only apply to elderly
subjects. Due to a limited number of available sizes for some glove
models among the 27 models tested, some subjects did not experi-
ence good hand tting with some gloves, which has been shown to
affect manual performance along with glove stiffness and adherence
(Bradley, 1969). However, the analyses using only the gloves allow-
ing good tting (n 5 gloves) likely minimized the potentially
confounding effect of poor hand tting. Small muscle fatigue
apparently built up during the whole SEMG protocol, with NRMS
results varying by 25% of RMSmax, supporting the randomization of
experimental conditions to control for carry-over effects. However,
fatigue added variability to NRMS values and consequently,

Table 3
Summary of the statistical results relative to the sensitivity of the SEMG test to the different experimental conditions (n 28) and between ve gloves selected according to the
psychophysical assessment.

Musclesa Comparisons between all (n 28) experimental conditions Comparisons between ve selected gloves (psychophysical
assessment)

Range of NRMSb ANOVA P value Number of differences (%)c ANOVA P value Post-hoc pairwise comparisonsd
FDS 2037 <0.001 63 (18%) <0.001 G1 < G4, G5; G2 < G5
FCR 2344 <0.001 110 (31%) <0.001 G1 < G4, G5; G2 < G5; G3 < G5
ECR 3147 <0.001 47 (13%) 0.007 G1 < G4, G5
ED 2946 <0.001 47 (13%) 0.007 G1 < G4, G5
FDS-FCR 2241 <0.001 104 (30%) <0.001 G1 < G4, G5; G2 < G5; G3 < G5
ECR-ED 3046 <0.001 85 (24%) <0.001 G1 < G4, G5
FDS-ED 2441 <0.001 85 (24%) <0.001 G1 < G4, G5; G2 < G5
X-all 2643 <0.001 101 (29%) <0.001 G1 < G4, G5; G2 < G5; G3 < G5
a
FDS: exor digitorum supercialis; FCR: exor carpi radialis; ECR: extensor carpi radialis longus; ED: extensor digitorum; X-all: average of all four muscles.
b
Range of NRMS averaged values (% EMGmax) across the 28 experimental conditions.
c
The number of signicant differences between glove conditions was counted (out of 351 comparisons) so as to demonstrate the sensitivity of EMG to detect differences
(see an example for FCR in Table 4 for more details). Please note that the bare hand condition was not considered to be able to compare sensitivity results with the
psychophysical assessment and the FDMT for which no bare hand condition was possible.
d
Only those groups for which signicant differences were noted are identied (G1: Group 1 of gloves).
332 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334

Fig. 4. Representation of the pairwise signicant differences (Tuckey) within the 28 experimental conditions (27 gloves bare hand condition) as detected by NRMS of exor carpi
radialis. The glove conditions were ranked according to the averaged psychophysical results (see Table 2), i.e. from the least rigid to the most rigid one. The Groups 1 through 5
correspond to subgroups which also include rigidity subcategories obtained by means of the psychophysical assessment (02, 24, 46, 68, 810). If the bare hand condition is
disregarded in the EMG results, to be able to compare sensitivity results with the psychophysical assessment for which no bare hand condition was possible, the number of
differences was 110 (out of 351 comparisons).

potentially decreased the sensitivity of the SEMG test. The fact that
IMF results did not show the typical decrease associated with fatigue
may just signify that rest was sufcient to wash-out metabolic by-
products from the muscles, but not enough to allow complete
muscle recovery. The glove thickness per se (information provided
in Table 2) may have introduced small variations in the SEMG test
because it likely affects (though to a small extent) the effective hand
size and forearm muscle lengths. This would consequently intro-
duce variability in grip strength and NRMS values and again lower
the sensitivity of the SEMG test. Finally, we cannot formally reject
the possibility that glove stiffness had changed with repeated
testing. However, if so, this is likely to be a negligible effect

Fig. 5. Flexor carpi radialis (FCR) activation level corresponding to all experimental conditions (n 28). The numbers identifying experimental conditions corresponds to the glove
numbers of Table 2, number 28 corresponding to the bare hand condition. The G1G5 subgroups, according to the psychophysical assessment, are identied (except condition #28:
bare hand control condition). The black bars show the glove that was selected in each of these subgroups in order to conduct more specic analyses (gloves no. 12, 14, 21, 5 and 2 for
G1G5, respectively).
 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334
Table 4
Correlation between EMG testing and psychophysical assessments and mechanical methods.
Musclesa Psychophysical assessment (Pearson correlations)
FDS 0.93
FCR 0.95
ECR 0.88
ED 0.90
FDSFCR 0.95
ECRED 0.90
FDSED 0.93
X-all 0.93
a
FDS: exor digitorum supercialis; FCR: exor carpi radialis; ECR: extensor carpi radialis longus; ED: extensor digitorum; X-all: average of all four muscles; KESF:
Kawabata Evaluation System for Fabrics (Kawabata, 1980). All correlation values were statistically signicant (P < 0.05).
b
Spearman correlations were carried out here because results from all mechanical tests were non-normally distributed and were consequently converted to ranks.
considering that only the psychophysical evaluation (nger move-
ments) and four step contractions have been carried out for each
glove. Consequently, we dont believe that this have modulated the
present ndings.
4.1. Sensitivity to experimental conditions
The FDMT was more sensitive (75% signicant comparisons) to
glove stiffness than the psychophysical (72% signicant compari-
sons) and SEMG (1938% signicant comparisons). These results
were expected for the SEMG test, as further discussed below, and as
anticipated when looking at the low variability (low SDs) of stiffness
indices from the FDMT (Harrabi et al., 2008, Figure 10) compara-
tively to what is observed in Fig. 2 of the present paper for the muscle
that was shown the most sensitive to glove stiffness (FCR).
Surprisingly, the sensitivity of the psychophysical assessment to
differences in glove stiffness was close to the FDMT and much
better than any of the EMG parameters. Indeed, most of the
signicant differences can be found between distant glove stiffness
categories but the psychophysical method was able to discriminate
more nearby categories than EMG. This might at least partly be
attributed to the use of the 10-level scale allowing a more precise
psychophysical evaluation of the subjects (details in the methods
section). Briey, the less and the most stiff gloves were attributed
respectively to the 1 and 10 boundaries of the scale, which repre-
sents a kind of self-report calibration (decreased inter-individual
differences) that maximizes the subjects differentiation zone
(increased sensitivity). These results concur with previous ndings
showing that self-report calibration procedures are efcient to
improve the accuracy of hand exertion measurements using
a psychophysical assessment (Spielholz, 2006).
Although the SEMG protocol was well standardized and allowed
the averaging of EMG amplitude estimates originating from several
trials (2 trials  2 sessions) and EMG electrode sites (n 4), which
generally increases the reliability of EMG variables (Hatch et al.,
1992; Lariviere et al., 2002), EMG was only allowed to discriminate
gloves having clear stiffness differences. Furthermore, the use of 30
subjects was not sufcient to detect more subtle stiffness differ-
ences. This methodology is consequently not sensitive enough to
make work-related recommendations since gloves that belongs to
Groups 1 and 4, as an example, are not usually intended to be used
for the same tasks. Denitely, the stochastic nature of surface EMG,
combined with different sources of error (electrode positioning,
EMG amplitude normalization using maximal contractions, etc.)
and with the various neuromuscular activation strategies used by
the central nervous system, cannot compete with mechanical
methods where these sources of variability are eliminated. Of
course, this conclusion depends on the way glove subgroups are
determined. Only three studies used EMG activation to assess glove
stiffness (Sudhakar et al., 1988; Kovacs et al., 2002; Lariviere et al.,
333
Mechanical tests (Spearman correlations)b
Free-deforming multidirectional KESF transversal KESF longitudinal
0.91 0.85 0.83
0.92 0.81 0.77
0.88 0.79 0.80
0.92 0.83 0.84
0.92 0.86 0.83
0.91 0.83 0.84
0.94 0.87 0.86
0.94 0.85 0.85
2004), but only one considered a sufcient number of gloves
(n 10 instead of 2 or 3 gloves) to allow more subtle stiffness
differences to be assessed (Kovacs et al., 2002). Kovacs study
(Kovacs et al., 2002) was successful at differentiating gloves using
subjects strength as a rst outcome measure, but only three
subgroups could be identied within the 11 conditions (10 gloves
and bare hand). EMG activation obtained during these maximal
contractions was also considered as a second outcome, but the
corresponding results were non-conclusive. In fact, this is not so
surprising since the test was based on maximum contractions and
consequently the forearm muscle activation was maximal (and thus
comparable) in all the conditions. This explains why we preferred
to use a different methodology using submaximal grip efforts cor-
responding to an absolute load (in N). Unfortunately, no compa-
rable results are available in the literature.
4.2. Construct validity of mechanical tests to assess glove stiffness
Although SEMG and psychophysical assessments are not as
sensitive as mechanical methods because of their intrinsic vari-
ability, these methodologies provide relevant appraisals of the
physiological/biomechanical demands associated to the use of stiff
gloves. In a previous study, correlations between the psychophys-
ical assessment and the mechanical tests were higher for the FDMT
(r 0.93) than for the KESF in the longitudinal (r 0.79) and
transversal (r 0.76) directions (Harrabi et al., 2008). These nd-
ings speak in favor of the FDMT that apparently describes more
closely the stiffness of protective gloves as wearers perceive it.
Although the relationship between SEMG and psychophysical
assessments is generally high (Grant et al., 2006), as further sup-
ported by the present ndings (correlations ranging between 0.88
and 0.95), the EMG assessment of the present study further
supports this conclusion by providing more objective measures.
Effectively, the correlations were higher with the FDMT (r range:
0.880.94) than for the KESF test (r range: 0.770.86).
The high correlations between the FDMT and EMG results (r
range: 0.880.94, this study) or the psychophysical assessment
[r 0.93, (Harrabi et al., 2008)] shows that this mechanical test
delivers approximately the same information, regarding glove stiff-
ness, than human-based tests. The present EMG results further
support the previously formulated hypothesis (Harrabi et al., 2008)
stating that the FDMT allows simulating the behavior of gloves in use
by applying multidirectional deformations to the glove during the
test. Fortunately, mechanical tests are less prone to errors, thus
requiring less effort and lower costs than human-based methodol-
ogies. In fact, the psychophysical assessment required over 30
subjects to reach approximately the same sensitivity as the FDMT.
Only ve glove samples were used in the present study for the FDMT
and probably that a few more samples would be sufcient to increase
substantially the sensitivity of this test, by narrowing the 95% CIs.
334 C. Lariviere et al. / Applied Ergonomics 41 (2010) 326334
4.3. Perspectives in ergonomics
The NRMS results showed that muscle activation can increase by
1621% (depending on the muscle) from the bare hand to the
stiffest glove condition. Even though not all glove models allowed
good hand tting to all subjects in the present study, this situation
realistically represents the industrial setting and it can now be
understood more easily why some workers prefer not wearing stiff
gloves. In addition, such increases in muscle activation are far from
negligible in terms of risk to develop musculoskeletal disorders
during repetitive exertions (Sjogaard and Sogaard, 1998). These
results emphasize the need for glove manufacturers to propose
glove materials that allow good protection without increasing
stiffness to an unsatisfactory level.
5. Conclusion
The ndings of the present study showed that mechanical tests
were more sensitive than human-based SEMG and psychophysical
assessments to assess glove stiffness. Also, these mechanical tests
were highly correlated to the muscle activation of forearm muscles
during a grip task, substantiating the construct validity of these
tests while questioning the relative importance of the hand/glove
interface when assessing glove stiffness. The FDMT, relative to the
KESF test, is particularly attractive in this respect because higher
correlations were achieved. The main advantage of using
a mechanical test such as the FDMT is the relatively low burden of
collection relative to human-based assessments. Finally, it was
showed that wearing gloves could increase forearm muscle acti-
vation by as much as 21%, which can partly explain why some
workers prefer not wearing stiff gloves and which emphasize the
need to develop glove materials that allow good protection without
increasing stiffness to an unsatisfactory level.
Acknowledgements
This research has been funded by the Institut de recherche
Robert-Sauve en sante et en securite du travail (IRSST), Montreal,
Canada.
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