Posted on Tue, Jun 22, 2010 @ 02:39 PM
When we work with people who have cognitive functional limitations, is there a good analog to the Physical Demands Characteristics (PDC) chart? The PDC chart is used to help bridge between the person's physical work capacity and the job's physical demands; are there analogous methods for cognitive work capacities and demands?
This is a very important problem. There are various strategies that can be used, depending on the issues that are presented. If this is a topic of interest, I can present additional ideas in the future. For today's entry, let me describe the use of the O*NET Abilities Domain, one of the six O*NET Occupational Descriptors for such a purpose. I have used this strategy several times for high-level professionals and executives who have experienced brain injuries.
The O*NET Abilities Domain is based on the Fleischman Job Analysis System (FJAS). Each of the abilities is represented in the FJAS by a behavior anchored rating scale (BARS). The BARS is a useful tool for work capacity evaluation because it presents observable behaviors that have been mathematically tied to a seven-point scale.
Depending on the demands of the occupation, certain ability factors are more important than others, which is obtained in the form of an Excel spreadsheet from the Details/Abilities section of O*NET for that occupation. An example is presented below for the top 10 (of 52) abilities for a client of mine who worked as a Management Analyst in the aeronautics and aerospace industry:
Importance is on a 100-point scale; in this example, Oral Comprehension is top-ranked. O*NET guides you to the most important abilities in the target occupation
Next, you need to design an evaluation and collect data from all available sources that illuminate those abilities. This begins with a careful history of the client's education and work, with the FJAS used to guide the discussion of the client's pre-injury work capacity in relation to the most important job demands. For example, Oral Comprehension is the "ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences". This ability is anchored at 5.6 on the FJAS 7-point BARS by "Understand a lecture on metaphysics", at 3.8 by "Understand instructions for a sport", and at 1.8 by "Understand a television commercial".
In addition, the FJAS BARS has very clear definitions for the ends of the BARS range. In this case, at the top end was "Requires understanding complex or detailed information that is presented orally, contains unusual words and phrases, and involves fine distinctions in meaning among words." With these anchors and this definition, I was able to conservatively estimate my client's pre-injury minimum at 5.5 to 6.0. His current ability was estimated between 4.0 and 4.5, representing a significant shortfall on which future rehab efforts should focus. Later discussion with a speech-language pathologist who evaluated my client indicated that he was at the low end of this range.
In the example above, I used subtests from the Employee Aptitude Survey, the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, and the Doll Chair Assembly Task situational assessment, and information from the neuropsychologist's test battery to develop a Cognitive Abilities Profile across his occupation's top ten ability demands.
This works best if the client has been fully employed and doing well in the occupation; without full employment, it is more difficult to estimate pre-injury capacity.
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