To Örebro University

To add knowledge on how occupations contribute to health and wellbeing and to explicit describe thetherapeutic potential in occupations deeper knowledge is needed. One way is to ground the knowledgeon narratives from people’s experiences. In consequence a questionnaire was constructed based onnarratives from persons with mental disorders who have taken part in occupational therapy. A new version of the questionnaire was developed and as the items have been reformed a new underlying structure was expected.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the construct validity and the internal consistency of the questionnarie in a new sample of individuals with severe mental disorders. Persons (n=106) with mental disorders participated in the study by answering the questionnarie after performing an occupation in therapy. The correlation between each of the 35 items was analyzed and items with high correlation were excluded from further analysis. Twenty-five items were left to explorethe underlying factor structure of the questionnarie.

A principal component analysis with varimaxrotation resulted in the five factors, “Ability to perform occupation”, “Feeling of belongingness”, “Engaging in occupation”, “Influencing on occupation” and “Insight into ability”. A second order factoranalysis resulted in a three component structure explaining 79 % of the variance. In summery, a pattern of occupation as a therapeutic medium was found and gave a ground for the construction of the questionnaire Self Assessment of Occupational Ability (SAO).

The pattern found is constructed by the three components, “Sense of competence, “Feeling of belongingness” and “Insight into ability”including the five factors and 25 items. The SAO will be presented the first time in the WFOT 2014, a tool to bee used by occupational therapist in their cooperation with persons with mental disability to find out how occupation can be of help in their recovery.