Validity and reliability of the Occupational Experience Profile

Abstract

Background

This study was designed to evaluate the psychometric properties of a new tool, the Occupational Experience Profile (OEP). The OEP was designed to be used to evaluate people’s levels of experiences of pleasure, productivity, restoration, and social connection during their occupational performances.

Aim

To evaluate aspects of validity and reliability of the OEP Pleasure, Productivity, Restoration and Social connection scales.

Methods

Fifty-eight occupational therapy students each completed three OEPs. Many-faceted Rasch analyses were then used to examine rating scale structure, dimensionality, and reliability of each OEP scale. Pearson product moment correlations were used to evaluate the strength of the relationships among the four scales.

Results

Each of the four OEP rating scales demonstrated effective rating scale functioning. The OEP items on each scale demonstrated acceptable levels of item goodness of fit and worked together to define a unidimensional scale of occupational experiences. The four scales appear to measure different but interrelated constructs.

Conclusion

The results provide preliminary evidence to support the validity and reliability of the OEP scales, but further research on larger and more diverse samples is recommended.

Significance

The OEP has the potential to be used in occupational therapy practice and research to evaluate how people experience their occupational performances.

Keywords:

• Occupational Experience Profile
• occupation
• experience
• assessment
• Rasch
• psychometrics
• Transactional Model of Occupation

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our appreciation to the course instructors and the students who participated in the study. We also express appreciation to Brett Berg who implemented the Rasch analyses and contributed to a preliminary draft of the results of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).