Matching work capacity and job demands: toward an enhanced measure of work ability

<p><strong>Objective: </strong>The Work Ability Index (WAI), the dominant measure of work ability, provides little information for targeting workplace interventions. There are benefits of developing new measures that focus on self-rated capacity to meet job demands rather than on health subscales of the WAI.</p> <p><strong>Methods: </strong>Structural equation modeling with cross-sectional data from 186 underground coal miners aged 18 to 64 years was used to model multivariate relationships between the WAI subscales, worker autonomy, and relationships with management.</p> <p><strong>Results: </strong>The results show differential associations between workplace factors and the WAI subscales, particularly self-rated capacity, highlighting potential intervention avenues not identifiable using traditional composite WAI scoring.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Focusing on self-rated work ability could be beneficial in clinical settings, provided measures are enhanced to capture a sufficient array of job demands.</p>