Quantifying social consequences of occupational injuries and illnesses: State of the art and research agenda

BACKGROUND: Quantitative methods for describing the social effects of occupational injury and illness are evaluated including surveys of prevalence and ratings of severity of social role disability. METHODS: The reliability and validity for the injured worker population of the most commonly used general and condition-specific role disability measures is reviewed and summarized. This review is used to support the development of a prototype strategy for quantifying the social consequences of occupational injuries and to identify areas of need for further research and development. CONCLUSIONS: Research is needed to: (a) determine which of existing measures is most precise in describing the severity of dysfunction due to a specific illness or injury, (b) expand the development of measures of specific role functioning (including paid work), and (c) develop item banks to support the construction of computer adaptive assessments of role functioning.