Work Disability Functional Assessment Battery (WD-FAB) Research Study

Objective

The objective of this study is to administer the Work Disability Functional Assessment Battery (WD-FAB) to a sample of working-age Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program beneficiaries and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program recipients to determine the value and feasibility of incorporating the WD-FAB into our medical continuing disability review (CDR) business process.

The WD-FAB is an assessment tool by which respondents self-report information about their personal functioning. We collaborated with the National Institutes of Health and Boston University to develop the WD-FAB for use in the disability determination process. The assessment was derived from the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. The WD-FAB uses Item Response Theory (IRT) and Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) to select the most relevant set of questions from an item bank containing over 300 questions. For more information about the development of the assessment, select WD-FAB Summary.

Status

SSA awarded a contract to Westat to administer the WD-FAB and other survey questions to participating SSA beneficiaries. The WD-FAB Research Study included two waves of data collection that concluded in August 2023. A data collection report is available under the Reports section of this webpage.

Under an interagency agreement with the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center’s Rehabilitation Medicine Department (NIH CC/RMD), the NIH CC/RMD staff reviewed and analyzed the data collected to help us evaluate the value and feasibility of incorporating the WD-FAB into our medical CDR business process. NIH CC/RMD’s Final Report is available under the Reports section of this webpage.

The study was conducted through two surveys involving medical CDR beneficiaries, administered six-months apart.

Survey 1 and 2 questions were mostly identical. Both surveys contained the same classification questions and administered the WD-FAB to participating SSA beneficiaries. The follow-up questions were different. Below is a summary of questions administered for both Survey 1 and Survey 2:

  • Classification questions/Demographic questions (age, gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, highest level of education completed) – See WD-FAB Data Collection Report Appendices - Appendix C.
  • Questions on general health, mental health status, and work-limiting conditions,
  • Veterans RAND 12 Item Health Survey (VR-12),
  • 4-item set of Healthy Days core questions (CDC HRQOL – 4) included in the state-based Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and
  • Questions from Form SSA-455.
  • WD-FAB (see WD-FAB Data Collection Report Appendices - Appendix D), included CAT administered survey across eight domains: Basic Mobility, Upper Body Function, Fine Motor Function, Community Mobility, Communication and Cognition, Resilience and Sociability, Self-Regulation, and Mood and Emotion; and
  • Follow-up questions:
    • Survey 1 follow-up questions (see Appendix E) included a brief set of follow-up questions to solicit feedback on the WD-FAB. These questions asked about ease of use, clarity of instructions, and perceived burden.
    • Survey 2 follow-up questions (see Appendix F) included 52 effort and symptom validity questions to examine endorsement of certain symptoms related to function.

The goals are to understand how the WD-FAB can contribute to the medical CDR process, how we can interpret the WD-FAB in this context and to assess the feasibility and value of incorporating the WD-FAB into our medical CDR process.

For additional information about the NIH CC/RMD analysis, please reference the WD-FAB Research Study Final Report available under the Reports section of this webpage.

Not applicable at this time.

WD-FAB Data Collection Report
WD-FAB Data Collections Report Appendices
WD-FAB Research Study Final Report

Not applicable at this time.

Not applicable at this time.