InTeO

Investigación en Terapia Ocupacional

InTeO

Investigación en Terapia Ocupacional

InTeO

Investigación en Terapia Ocupacional

InTeO

Investigación en Terapia Ocupacional

InTeO

Investigación en Terapia Ocupacional

Validation and Normative Data for Exhaustive Evaluation in Occupational Therapy (Nor+ Project)

Evaluation plays an important role in all scientific disciplines. The need for scientific evidence includes the need for a proper evaluation to support professional practice and also serves to reduce the use of care services through detection of problems and their treatment needs.

The discipline of occupational therapy is no different. Evidence-based occupational therapy practice highlights the importance of selecting and using instruments that have been validated, in addition to guaranteeing that these are used for the proper ends and in the correct context. Occupational therapists use rigorous evaluation to establish the objectives for their interventions as well as for proper planning, and adjustment of the necessary aspects. They also carry out a continual evaluation of the process and its results. It is necessary to use validated evaluation methods in order to establish proper decision-making about the occupational competencies of those evaluated, and, as a result, to make decisions about treatment.

However, the useful instruments that have been validated in Spain regarding exhaustive evaluation in occupational therapy are scarce. Frequently, those that are validated do not include the required data to serve as a reference for the Spanish population. Thus the NOR+ Project aims to respond to the need to provide adequate evaluation instruments. Specifically, it aims to  complete the study of psychometric properties and to collect normative data for some of the most relevant instruments in the discipline. These include the Spanish version of the Occupational Balance Questionnaire (OBQ-E) and the Spanish version of the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB-E).
In order to achieve these objectives, the project carried out a transversal study with voluntary participation of Spanish people over age 18 from different Autonomous Communities. Participants were without diseases or conditions that would exclude them from filling out the evaluation program that includes the OBQ-E and the FAB-E, among other instruments. Representativeness of the Spanish population was ensured by making reference to the sociodemographic factors of the population published by the National Statistics Institute.

Evaluations took place between January, 2017 and April, 2019. Data analysis is currently underway, and results are expected to be published in 2020.