Roann Barris

The Role Checklist: Development and Empirical Assessment of Reliability:

This article describes the development and reliability testing of the Role Checklist, a two-part written inventory designed to identify past, present, and future roles and the degree to which individuals value each role. Roles included provide expectations and/or opportunities for occupational behavior, such as student, worker, volunteer, care giver, home maintainer, friend, family member, religious participant, hobbyist/amateur, and participant in organizations. To assess reliability, we administered the checklist twice to a group of 124 normal volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 79. Values obtained for kappa and weighted kappa, measures of agreement that correct for chance agreement, suggested moderate or better agreement for Parts 1 and 2 of the checklist. We concluded, therefore, that the checklist has satisfactory test/retest reliability.

Occupational Role Performance and Life Satisfaction in Elderly Persons.

Through occupational roles, individuals structure their time to meet their personal needs and the demands of society. Due to various factors, older adults frequently experience loss of occupational roles, which may decrease the subjective quality of life. The present study used the model of human occupation as a conceptual framework to examine the relationship between the number and meaningfulness of roles performed and life satisfaction in a sample of 112 non-institutionalized elderly persons. The results suggest a positive, significant relationship between life satisfaction and the number of roles performed and the level of involvement in meaningful roles. These findings lend support to the basic premise of occupational therapy, that occupation can maintain and/or restore health.

Occupational Function and Dysfunction in Three Groups of Adolescents.

This study examined the characteristics of occupational function and dysfunction in adolescents with a psychophysiological illness and compared these adolescents to a group with psychiatric diagnoses and a group of high school students who were not being treated for medical or emotional problems. Using the model of human occupation as a theoretical framework, data were collected on the status of volition and habituation subsystem components. Analyses of variance revealed few differences among the groups; consequently, a discriminant function analysis was performed to determine whether group differences would be identified when variables were treated as an aggregate. The model that was tested accurately discriminated all normal subjects from the others and accurately classified 7 of the psychiatric subjects and 9 of the psychophysiological subjects. This model included the following variables: locus of control; total rating of competence during a typical day; total rating of importance of activities during a typical day; number of not-valued roles; strong interests in the past ten years; total rating of enjoyment; number of past roles; and time spent in each of work, play, and daily living tasks.

Collecting Data on Play: A Critique of Available Methods

Play, a subjective and naturalistic behavior, both reflects and facilitates development. As such, it provides an important area of research for occupational therapy. Although a multitude of methods and instruments exist for studying play, they are not comparable in terms of their psychometric properties nor in terms of the approach they take to conceptualizing play. This article identifies and critiques a number of instruments that examine the behavior exhibited during play, the environment of play, and peoples attitudes toward play. Available information on the reliability and validity of the reviewed instruments is presented, and the problems associated with assessing play behaviors are described It is concluded that play assessment is presently in a nascent stage of evolution and therefore represents a potentially fruitful area for additional research.

Organization of Knowledge in Occupational Therapy: A Proposal and a Survey of the Literature:

There is no universally accepted structure for organizing knowledge in occupational therapy. Confusion over the structuring of knowledge in the field potentially adds to ambiguity of content. This article examines two existing proposals for knowledge organization and proposes a related but alternative approach. Based on this proposed structure, literature in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy over the past ten years was reviewed and classified to reveal patterns and trends.

Relationships between Eating Behaviors and Person/Environment Interactions in College Women

This study examined relationships between self-reported eating habits, environmental interactions occurring within the context of personal projects, and the psychosocial atmosphere of the living environments of 65 college women. Regression analyses and comparisons of selected high and low scores on the eating measures suggested that women with high (dysfunctional) eating scores had more food-related personal projects, did more projects alone, performed more projects at home, and had projects linked to a more limited range of environmental settings than did the women with low scores. They also derived less enjoyment, anticipated less success, and felt more stress and less control of their projects than the other women did. Finally, in their living environments, they perceived a strong emphasis on a traditional social orientation and on competition.

Educational Experience and Changes in Learning and Value Preferences

Education attempts to instill certain values, as well as knowledge and skills, in students. Yet, examination of value changes is infrequent, and the findings of existing studies are equivocal. This article reports on a study of value and learning preference changes in occupational therapy students. Two small groups of undergraduate and graduate students completed the Rokeach Value Survey, the Learning Preference Inventory, and an educational values inventory (developed by the first two authors) at the beginning of their professional education and again while on affiliation. Four other groups completed the instruments once: undergraduate and graduate students in the first semester of the professional program, and undergraduate and graduate students in the second semester. For the students who participated in the study twice, undergraduates were more likely than graduates to rearrange their value priorities, and changes were more likely to occur with educational values than Rokeach values. However, although individuals may have changed substantially, when subjects were treated as a group changes tended to be masked. Comparisons of first semester, second semester, and affiliating undergraduates and graduates revealed few differences among groups, although again, educational values differed more than Rokeach values. Because the study seems to suggest that individuals are affected in varying ways by their education, a major implication is that a methodology for examining the impact of professional education must account for initial differences in students.

Use of the Model of Human Occupation to Predict Women's Exercise Behavior

This study used the model of human occupation as the basis for an analysis of leisure exercise behavior. A sample of 140 adult women completed a questionnaire that measured level of physical activity, age, and both generic and exercise-specific measures for the following model components: personal causation, values, interests, habits, and roles. A series of stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed the exercise-specific operationalization of the model to be somewhat successful (R2=0.42) in predicting exercise behavior. Implications for research and clinical use of the model are addressed, and it is recommended that assessment be specific to the type of occupational behavior under consideration.

A Reply to Clark and Sharrott

I am indebted to Clark and Sharrott for providing an illuminating and thoughtful critique of my study and thus paving the way for an exchange of ideas related to ideology in occupational therapy. Many of the issues they raised involved concerns that were given considerable thought by my consultants and me during the design of the study. Since there is no tradition of research on occupational therapy ideologies, it was necessary to chart some new territory and to initiate a suitable methodology. therefore, it is my view that the research was prudent, despite its methodological limitations. While Clark and Sharrott suggest that no conclusions can be drawn from the study, their claim seems both out of context in terms of present knowledge and incorrect in view of the studys findings. My intention in this response to their remarks is to demonstrate the logic behind the methodological and conceptual decisions with which Clark