Perceived Justice of Compensation Process for Return-to-Work: Development and Validation of a Scale

Abstract

The experience of injured workers is influenced by multiple systems-the workplace, the healthcare system, and the workers' compensation system. Little research has been conducted on the impact of the workers' compensation system on injured workers' personal experience and on the justice of the workers' compensation process. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a measure of the justice of the compensation process. Injured workers (n=446) with musculoskeletal injuries, in Ontario, Canada, filing a lost-time claim, completed a telephone survey 6 months post-injury. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with two separate samples, and concurrent validity was examined. The four hypothesized factors emerged: distributive justice, procedural justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice factors accounted for 96.3% of the variance. Confirmatory factor analyses had satisfactory fit indices to confirm the initial model. Alpha coefficients ranged from 0.86 to 0.92. Concurrent validity of the scale was supported: relationships of distributive and procedural justice with claim status, claim processing delay, perception of going back to work too soon, duration of work accommodation, and satisfaction with work accommodation were in the expected direction. Workers' experience of the justice of the compensation process can now be measured with a psychometrically sound and theoretically based instrument. This instrument offers researchers the opportunity to focus on the justice of the compensation process of injured workers. It can increase the attention that policy-makers, compensation management, healthcare providers, and other return-to-work stakeholders give to the impact of the compensation system and provide a broadened view of workers' experience.

Preserving workers' dignity in workers' compensation systems: An international perspective

“…They promote emphasis on workers' residual abilities, yet policies are conducive to ignoring the impact of pain on the ability to work, a problem not only for workers but for the rehabilitation providers who are called upon to provide them with support . Perceived injustice of the process can itself impede return to work [Sullivan et al, 2008;Franche et al, 2009].…”

Determining Disability: New Advances in Conceptualization and Research

“…With further validation research in other jurisdictions and with different populations, such a measure could become incorporated in disability determinations. In the Franche et al (2009) study, the concurrent validity of the scale is supported by relationships of distributive and procedural justice with claim status, claim processing delay, perception of going back to work too soon, and duration and dissatisfaction with work accommodations.…”

“…Three papers published in this present issue deal directly with these themes; there are two empirical papers on the topic and one legal paper. First, Franche et al (2009) present research on the development of an assessment tool of perceived injustice and the relationship of scores obtained with the instrument to heightened pain behavior and disability. Second, Sullivan et al (2009) undertook empirical investigation of the pain elicited by putting forth effort on physical tasks and scores on a different scale of perceived injustice.…”

“…Factors associated with perceived justice of the compensation process from the individual claimant's perspective have been rarely investigated, although experiences involving mistrust and suspiciousness, disrespect, lack of validation of harm by the injury, gender bias, and difficulty navigating the compensation system, as stipulated in the paper of Franche et al (2009), have been described in the literature. The authors report on the development and validation of a measure of the perceived justice of the compensation process that builds on four theoretical dimensions of justice: distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal.…”

Narratives of Sick Leave, Return to Work and Job Mobility for People with Common Mental Disorders in Sweden

“…In RTW processes, we also need to consider contacts with social insurance officials and employers, where the conditions for equal dialogue may be different than in healthcare, due to these actors' influence over the person's financial situation. Here, it is also relevant to refer to the person's experience of justice and recognition in the rehabilitation process, where it has been noted how perceptions of injustice, mistrust or stigmatization negatively affects the conditions for RTW [24][25][26].…”