The Questionnaire for the Assessment of Cognitive Demand Level of Professional Activities (QANECAP
Portuguese versión (original)
Freitas, S., Nogueira, J., Prieto, G., Vilar, M., Santana, I., & Simões, M. R. (2018). Questionário de Avaliação do Nível de Exigência Cognitiva das Atividades Profissionais (QANECAP) [The Questionnaire for the Assessment of Cognitive Demand Level of Professional Activities (QANECAP). PsyAssessmentLab, Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade de Coimbra. Portugal.
Theoretical background
The QANECAP was designed to obtain a measure of the cognitive demand of the professional activities. The assessment of the level of cognitive difficulty of the activities involved in different professional experiences, allow the measurement of the cognitive requirements for each profession. The professional occupation has been explored as a variable with an active contribute to the cognitive reserve, after the acquisition of formal education. There are currently a considerable number of studies that use the occupation path or professional experiences as a valid variable that contribute for the assessment of the cognitive reserve. The major grid to code the occupational or professional status has been based on the International Standard Classification of the Occupations 2008 (ISCO-2008).
Description
Assessment: cognitive demand level of profession activities.
Type of instrument: Questionnaire composed by 19 questions related to different cognitive competences involved in several professional activities. The self-response was filled according to different levels of difficulty of the same competence/activity. This questionnaire can also be used with an alternative purpose, which is the assessment of the premorbid cognitive demand of the profession, when the participants were already in the retirement.
Administration: self-response, 5 minutes.
Population: for those who have a professional activity.
Studies
The QANECAP was originally developed within the project “Aging and Cognitive Decline in the Portuguese Population: Incidence, profiles, risk and protective factors” (IF/FCT/01325/2015), including the development of the experimental study, the pilot study (N=202) and the conclusion of the final version.
Currently, there are in course normative, psychometric and clinical validation studies (with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease patients) of the QANECAP for the Portuguese population.
Funding
The research studies of the QANECAP was supported by the project granted to the first author from Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) [IF/FCT/01325/2015].
Contacts
Sandra Freitas (sandrafreitas0209@gmail.com)
References
- Freitas, S., Nogueira, J., Prieto, G., Vilar, M., Santana, I., & Simões, M. R. (2018). Questionário de Avaliação do Nível de Exigência Cognitiva das Atividades Profissionais (QANECAP) [The Questionnaire for the Assessment of Cognitive Demand Level of Professional Activities (QANECAP). PsyAssessmentLab, Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade de Coimbra. Portugal.
- Freitas, S., Nogueira, J., Santana, I., & Simões, M. R. (2018). Desenvolvimento da Bateria de Avaliação da Reserva Cognitiva (BARC) e estudo piloto com idosos cognitivamente saudáveis e com pacientes com declínio cognitivo [The Assessment Battery of the Cognitive Reserve [BARC]: Development and exploratory study with cognitively healthy elderly and patients with cognitive impairment]. Poster apresentado no 10º Congresso AIDAP/AIDEP: Diagnóstico e Avaliação Psicológica [Poster, 10th International Conference: Diagnostic and Psychological Assessment]. Coimbra, Portugal.
- International Labour and Office. (2012) International Standard Classification of Occupations Structure, Group Definitions and Correspondence Tables, ISCO-08. International Labour Organization.