A Generic Work Capacity Assessment Tool for Working Conditions In India: Preliminary Results of Development and Standardisation

Abstract

The Work Capacity Assessment (WCA) tool is a new tool developed specifically to assess worker suitability for working conditions in India. This study presents the preliminary results of reliability (interrater) and internal consistency of the WCA tool. The steps for instrument development were followed stringently. The newly developed tool addressed three categories of work-Heavy Manual labour (HML), Sustained Labour (SuL) and Sedentary work (SeW). Four participants in HML five in SuL and five in SeW performed activities specified by the new scale; videography was done simultaneously. Internal consistency between the items in the scale was ascertained by Cronbach’s Alpha. Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient was ascertained for inter tester reliability. In all three categories of workers there were some items which had to be omitted due to lack of variance. After omitting these items alpha was 0.65 and 1 in HML, 0.95 and -0.14 in SuL and 0.83 in SeW. Except for Isometric Strength and Posture Sustainability in HML which showed a poor correlation of 0.33, other items in all the categories have shown moderate to excellent correlation with each other. Most of the items have shown acceptable internal consistency and reliability, but a larger sample size and heterogeneous worker population needs to be tested. This is just a preliminary report and the tool needs to be further validated before clinical use.