Agreement between Occupational Therapy Practice Framework classifications and occupational therapists' classifications

The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) developed the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process (the Framework) to categorize and organize concepts in the field of occupational therapy in a manner that would be understandable to practitioners within the field as well as to external readers. The current study investigates the degree to which occupational therapists' classification of terminology agrees with the Framework's classification of terminology. Through mail survey format, 200 randomly selected AOTA occupational therapist members were asked to classify 30 randomly selected terms from the Framework into the 6 domain categories of the Framework. Based on the responses of 94 completed surveys, low levels of agreement were found between therapists' and the Framework categorizations. Overall, practicing therapists did not categorize terms in a manner consistent with the categorization of the Framework. We recommend that AOTA refrain from developing systems of categorization, at least until a consensus develops in the field concerning terminology.