title: Using self-report and adverse event measures to track health's impact on productivity in known groups.
abstract: The use of survey data to measure and monitor health and productivity differences between groups is an issue of increasing importance. This article examines the capacity of productivity self-reports (derived from surveys) and adverse event measures (derived from administrative sources) to differentiate groups with a priori known characteristics. A replication strategy is used to test the contributions that productivity self-reports make, alone as well as above and beyond measures of adverse events, to the discrimination of 5 pairs of groups classified by clinical, job type, and demographic criteria. These tests are conducted on representative samples of the active, largely blue-collar employee population at International Truck and Engine Corporation. The results show that both productivity self-reports and adverse event measures differentiate and track known groups. Even in the presence of highly significant effects from adverse event measures, self-reports improve the assessment of productivity. We conclude that: 1) although the joint use of self-reports and adverse event measures is the better approach, practitioners can use self-reports with the expectation that this method will track group differences in health and productivity when adverse event measures are not available; and 2) survey self-reports make unique and independent contributions when adverse events measures are used.
mesh_terms: D000041:Absenteeism; D000062:Accidents, Occupational / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000328:Adult; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D004526:Efficiency; D004650:Employee Performance Appraisal; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016272:Occupational Health; D016017:Odds Ratio; D010559:Personnel Management; D011336:Probability; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012649:Self Concept; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D017749:Total Quality Management; D014481:United States