Occupational Concepts: An Underutilized Resource to Further Disabled People and Others Being Occupied: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Background: Being occupied is an important factor in human well-being and ranges from paid and unpaid work to activities of daily living. Various occupational concepts that do not contain health in the phrase such as “occupational justice” are employed to engage with the social barriers people experience in being occupied. The aim of this study was to understand better to what extent the non-health occupational concepts are used in the academic literature to discuss the social barriers disabled people face in being occupied and whether these occupational concepts are used to enrich discussions in areas that impact the reality of occupation in general such as equity/equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), science and technology governance, well-being and the impact of environmental issues. Methods: a scoping review of academic abstracts employing SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Web of Science was performed. Results: We found 24,104 abstracts for the 28 occupational concepts we used in general and 624 abstracts in conjunction with disability terms. Of these 28 occupational concepts, “occupational performance” was mentioned the most (in 9739 of the 24,104 and 397 of the 624 abstracts). The next concept “occupational engagement” was already present in one tenth or less. Occupational justice was present in 700 of the 24,104 and 14 of the 624 abstracts. Furthermore, within the 24,104 and 624 abstracts EDI, science and technology governance, environmental topics, and well-being measures were rarely or not mentioned. Most of the 624 abstracts originated from occupational therapy journals. Only 23 of the 624 abstracts originated from journals with “disability”, and none with “disability studies” in the title. Conclusion: Non-health occupational concepts are underutilized in discourses that focus on decreasing the social barriers to being occupied in general and in relation to disabled people, which is a missed opportunity and should be fixed.