Psychosocial risks of workers in the plywood industry: A cross-sectional study in the Ecuadorian Amazon region.

This work assessed the psychosocial risks of 124 workers from the plywood industry in Ecuador's Amazon region. Two psychosocial risk assessment (PRA) methods were selected due to their widespread use in Ecuadorian organisations: FPSICO from the Spanish National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the "Psychosocial Risk Assessment Questionnaire" (PRAQ) from the Ecuadorian Labour Ministry. Therefore, two surveys of 89 and 58 items were applied to evaluate nine scales and eight risk dimensions for FPSICO and PRAQ, respectively. Results show that according to FPSICO, the main psychosocial risks were detected in the scales of working time (WT), variety and content (VC), and workload (WL), with a prevalence of 34.8 % and 41.7 %. For PRAQ, the margin of action and control (D4), load and work rate (D1), and leadership (D3) were the most affected dimensions, with a risk prevalence between 29.1 % and 43.6 %. Although there is a lower risk prevalence in the rest of the scales and dimensions assessed, improvement actions are needed in the short term. Furthermore, the findings suggest an association between gender and risk prevalence, especially in the dimensions of Leadership (D3), Skills development (D2), and Self-perceived health (D8.8), where being a woman increases the likelihood of suffering from these conditions by up to three times. In addition, a brief comparative analysis was conducted, looking for coincidences in the scales that each PRA instrument assesses and the prevalence of the psychosocial risks detected.