Event Date
“Measuring Work Capacity”
Work capacity is a measure of health expressed in relation to the functional demands of the work environment. Specifically, it is the capacity to perform a job or set of jobs, and represents the interaction between an individual’s cognitive, physical, psychomotor, and sensory abilities and the demands of the job. However, existing data do not allow direct comparisons between functional abilities and occupational requirements. The long-term goal of this research is to examine how functional abilities shape work capacity, interact with early-life human capital, and influence employment opportunities across local areas and industries, shaping independence and healthy aging.
This paper explores how to improve measurement of work capacity by integrating objective performance test data with self-reported abilities, aligning them with occupational ability requirements from the O*NET database. To address potential self-report bias (e.g., overestimating one’s own abilities), we fielded a Fall 2024 survey among ~4,000 UAS respondents, collecting self-reported functional abilities alongside six cognitive performance tests. These tests allow us to construct different measures of respondent bias, which we can incorporate into individualized measures of work capacity.