Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations.
The Occupational Interview for Adolescents: Strengths, Difficulties, and Resources was developed for understanding the occupational strengths and difficulties of adolescents and their attributions of successes and difficulties. Typical adolescents described themselves as having difficulties in leisure, education, and self-care. The results of the study point to a need for occupational health promotion programs for typical adolescents.
Primary Author and Speaker: Miri Tal-Saban
Additional Authors and Speakers: Adina Maeir
BACKGROUND: Occupations are considered important for health and well-being. Adolescence, in particular, is viewed as an intensive period of occupation-related development and identity. Yet, a small amount of studies has examined the self-reported occupational strengths and difficulties as described by typical adolescents.
PURPOSE: This study aimed to identify experience-based occupational strengths and difficulties from the perspective of adolescents.
DESIGN: This mixed-methods study design used quantitative descriptive analyses for identifying frequencies of occupational strengths and difficulties, and qualitative content analyses of adolescent’s attributions of their experiences
METHODS:
PARTICIPANTS: The study included 84 typical adolescents, between the ages of 12–18 years (M age = 15.15, SD = 1.59), of whom 52% were females. Instruments: The Occupational Interview for Adolescents: Strengths, Difficulties, and Resources (Tal-Saban, & Maeir, 2019). The Interview was developed to study adolescent’s perceptions of their occupational experiences. The interview includes three parts. Part A includes a table of occupations rated for satisfaction with performance, perceived difficulty, importance and enjoyment; Part B includes questions about three selected occupational strengths and difficulties, exploring adolescents’ attributions of success and difficulties to internal or external factors; Part C includes questions exploring the strategies adolescents use to promote their occupational success. In this study we used only the first two parts of the interview.
RESULTS: Typical adolescents reported difficulties in all occupational domains: 35.5% reported difficulties in self-care, 38.61% in education and 26.4% in leisure and particularly social participation. Not surprisingly the highest percentage of strengths were in the leisure occupational domain (69.66%), whereas self-care was least reported as an area of strength (13.68%). Qualitative analyses of adolescents’ responses to attribution questions revealed three themes relating to success (1). Self-attribution further divided into two sub themes. (a). innate personal qualities, for example, ‘I Feel that I understand people, I have a talent for listening’; (b) Skills that I acquired and work at for example, ‘persistence’, ‘I practice a lot; (2) external environment, for example, ‘My parents help me and encourage me to succeed’, ‘A fun teacher’ (3) motivational factors, for example, ‘I enjoy doing this activity’, ‘I want to improve myself, so I study hard’. These three themes were also found for attributions of difficulties (1). Self-attribution further divided into two sub themes. (a). innate personal qualities for example, ‘ I’m insecure’, I have problems concentrating’; (b). Lack of resources, for example, ‘I have limited time’ (2) external environment, for example, ‘The lessons are boring.’; (3) motivational factors, for example, ‘I don’t have the motivation to accomplish my goals’.
CONCLUSION: Typical adolescents described themselves as having difficulties in leisure, education and self-care. Attribution of difficulties among participants described a negative cycle of motivation whereby an occupation that is experienced as difficult is also undesirable (boring) and hence not further engaged in. The results of this study indicate that adolescents’ occupational experiences warrant the attention of occupational therapists in order to address potential risks for their occupational health and well-being.
References
American Occupational Therapy Association. (2017). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process (3rd ed.). American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68(Supplement_1):S1–S48. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2014.682006
Widmark, E., & Fristedt, S. (2019). Occupation according to adolescents: Daily occupations categorized based on adolescents’ experiences. Journal of Occupational Science, 26(4), 470-483.
