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RehabMeasures

Work Environment Impact Scale

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Purpose

The purpose of WEIS is to assist therapists in gathering information on how individuals with physical or psychosocial disabilities experience and perceive their work environments. It measures the environment’s impact on a particular worker through items addressing work performance, satisfaction, and physical, emotional and social well-being.

Link to Instrument

Acronym WEIS

Area of Assessment

Patient Satisfaction
Social Support
Occupational Performance
General Health

Assessment Type

Performance Measure

Cost

Not Free

Actual Cost

$40.00

Cost Description

Cost includes access to the full PDF assessment manual, fillable PDF assessment forms, and online forms. After purchase, the manual and all forms are available at www.moho.uic.edu.

Populations

Key Descriptions

  • Number of items in the instrument: WEIS includes a semi-structured interview and a rating scale. The manual provides 30 interview questions that can be used for the semi-structured interview but are not required. It also includes an outline that works as a content guide if the therapists wants to come up with questions on their own. The rating scale includes 17 items.each item targets an environmental factor that may impact the worker. Some of the factors are temporal demands, objects used at work, physical space, and social support.
  • Minimum and maximum scores: Max Score: 4- Strongly Supports; Minimum Score: 1- Strongly Interferes
  • Brief description of item scoring: Each item (environmental feature) is cored based on whether or not it supports or interferes with the worker’s needs or preferences for performance, satisfaction, and physical/emotional/social well-being.
  • Administration instructions:
    1. Obtain background date: obtain date regarding space where worker is employed. Gather knowledge on worker’s responsibilities, types of individuals the worker engages with, tools the worker may use, and the workers schedule.
    2. Conduct interview: utilize recommended to conduct interview. The questions are meant to guide therapist to know what questions to ask, but it is likely that the therapist will need to adjust questions or structure the questions differently depending on their clients needs. if the therapists feel comfortable phrasing the questions independently, they can use the outline to know what content they should be asking about. Therapists are also able to conduct the interview without the given questions or outline. after gathering sufficient information from the interview, complete the rating scale. Please note that therapists are welcomed to provide feedback to the worker about what factors of their work environments are impacting negatively or positively.
    3. Complete rating scale: the therapist can complete the rating scale as soon as the interview is over . If this is not possible, therapist may complete the scale at a later time but should have notes from the interview to better recall the information needed to complete the scale. It is recommended that therapists make notes/comments when rating an item.
    4. Utilize the information from the interview: the therapists should. Analyze the information gathered from the interview and rating scale. Moreover, the therapists should determine what factors in the work environment can be altered to improve the workers participation in their worker role.
  • Any other important information from manuals or publications: Interview questions are not recommended to be used with individuals who have been without a job for a long period of time since the questions ask about how a current work environment impacts them. Therapists may want to complete the WEIS in conjunction with the Worker Role Interview.

Number of Items

17

Equipment Required

  • Pen
  • Notepad
  • Rating Scale

Time to Administer

45 minutes

The interview should take about 30 Minutes to conduct; the rating scale should take about 10-15 minutes.

Required Training

Reading an Article/Manual

Age Ranges

Adult

18 - 64

years

Instrument Reviewers

  • Cynthia Espinosa, Occupational Therapy Student, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Estefania Garcia Gomez, Occupational Therapy Student, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Hallie Goldenstein, Occupational Therapy Student, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Paulina Pei, Occupational Therapy Student, University of Illinois at Chicago

ICF Domain

Activity
Participation

Measurement Domain

Cognition
Emotion
General Health
Motor
Sensory

Professional Association Recommendation

MOHO Clearinghouse Department of Occupational Therapy

Considerations

  • Semi-structured interview type may take longer than other assessments
  • Designed for individuals who have been chronically unemployed, but may be used with individuals who have been unemployed in past
  • Can be used in conjunction with Worker Role Interview

Mental Health

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Interrater/Intrarater Reliability

Psychiatric disabilities (Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, Anxiety Disorders): (Kielhofner, 1998; n= 11, 10; Mean Age= 38.2, 40.3)

Raters were not formally trained, but learned by reviewing the manual and a practice rating form. Study finds minimal differences between raters, indicating that the method of learning is adequate for experienced therapists.

  • All 17 raters were fit (0 misfit), indicating all valid raters
  • Raters did not differ in severity/leniency of ratings (Rater separation=1.18)
  • Authors suggest that the WEIS has minimal rater bias

Internal Consistency

Psychiatric disabilities: (Kielhofner et al., 1998)

  • Items work well to define a unidimensional construct
  • Only one item, “Interaction with Others,” was a poor representation (infit MnSq= 1.6, Zstd=3.0) of the underlying construct
  • Authors feel due to only one item being misfit, the WEIS has evidence of internal validity

Construct Validity

Convergent validity:

Psychiatric disabilities: (Kielhofner et al., 1998)

  • Average calibration for subjects (64.32) near average item calibration (50.0), indicating high construct validity
  • The order of item calibration was logical
  • Item calibration ranges from 42.68 to 58.03
  • Person separation adequate (5.80), with reliability of 0.97
  • Item separation adequate (2.77), with reliability of 0.88

Face Validity

Based on the items listed on the rating scale, the WEIS appears to measure the impact a work environment has on a worker. The items on the scale address factors in the work environment and how these can be enablers or barriers to work performance. (Kielhofner et al., 1998)

Mixed Populations

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Normative Data

Sick Leave: (Ekbladh et al., 2012; n = 53; mean age = 43.0 (11) years; 34 (64%) women)
Individuals that experience sick leave due to different medical conditions. Conditions included:
Mental, behavioral disorders
Diseases of nervous system
Diseases of the eye and adnexa
Diseases of the circulatory system
Diseases of the respiratory system
Disease of the digestive system
Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue
Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings
Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes
***Most common diagnoses: musculoskeletal system and mental, behavioral disorders.

  • The top two diagnoses included in this population include “diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue” and “mental, behavioural disorders” (Ekbladh et al., 2012, p. 215).
  • 56 participating workers, 52 (93%) showed acceptable fit on the measurement model
  • Person separation index was 2.71,which means the scale can separate the sample into at least three and almost four statistically distinct strata (3.94), which indicated three to four levels of fit between person and his or her environment. 
  • “Calibrated on the same continuum, the person mean measure was 0.49 (SD 0.71) and the item mean measure was 0.00 (SD 0.53)” ((Ekbladh et al., 2012, p. 216-217).

Interrater/Intrarater Reliability

Sick Leave: (Ekbladh et al., 2012)

  • Poor interrater reliability
  • Differences in rater severity existed: (Rater Separation Index: 6.69); although this does not impact the validity of the measure, a lower rater separation index is preferred because it would indicate that the client’s score is less impacted by rater.

Internal Consistency

Sick Leave: (Ekbladh et al., 2012)

  • Excellent internal consistency
  • MnSq. value= (.82-1.02)
  • Zstd= (-1.3-.1)
  • “Fit statistics included the mean square standardized residual (MnSq), that is, the ratio between observed and expected scores, and the standardized mean square (ZSTD)” (Ekbladh et al., 2012, p. 216).
  • These scores indicate that the items in the rating scale measure the same underlying construct.
  • All but one item demonstrated an adequate fit. The item that was unfit was “supervisor interaction”. This item had a MnSq value of 1.56 and a Zstd value of 3.7 (Ekbladh et al., 2012).

Construct Validity

Sick Leave: (Ekbladh et al., 2012)

  • Item calibration range: -1.14-0.92
  • Higher calibrations are considered to be more challenging for the fit between the person and their work environment
  • Lower calibrations are considered to be less challenging for the fit between the person and their work environment
  • The highest item was “Rewards” (0.92) and the lowest item was “Interaction with Others” (-1.14).
  • Item separation was 4.04, which implies that the WEIS separated the items into at least five different difficulty levels; the WEIS followed a hierarchical ordering so that the items demonstrated increased challenges of environmental impacts.

Face Validity

Based on the items listed on the rating scale, the WEIS appears to measure the impact work environment has on a worker. The items on the scale ask address factors in the work environment and how these can be enablers or barriers to work performance (Ekbladh et al., 2012).

Bibliography

Ekbladh, E., Fan, C. W., Sandqvist, J., Hemmingsson, H., & Taylor, R. (2012). Work environment impact scale: Testing the psychometric properties of the Swedish version. 213-219. doi:10.3233/WOR-121574

Kielhofner, G, Lai, J.S., Olson, L., Haglund, L. Ekbadh, E., Hedlund, M. (1998). Psychometric properties of the work environment impact scale: a cross-cultural study. Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Associated Health Professions, University of Illinois at Chicago.

University of Illinois at Chicago, Board of Trustees. “WEIS.” MOHO, 2019, www.moho.uic.edu/productDetails.aspx?aid=12.