Biomedical Engineering Reference
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is universal agreement on the role of personal factors in all stages of the rehabilitation
process (Geyh et al. 2011; Gutenbrunner et al. 2007; Steiner et al. 2002) especially “when
the ICF was introduced as a framework for comprehensive, holistic and multidisciplinary
assessment in a clinical context” (Geyh et al. 2011, p. 1097). But what about personal factors
and assistive devices?
8.4 Personal Factors and Assistive Solutions
According to the authors of the above-mentioned reviewed literature (Geyh et al. 2011),
personal factors are prevalently mentioned in papers related to occupational and voca-
tional rehabilitation, psychiatric rehabilitation, rehabilitation counselling, and psychoso-
cial care intervention, and in just four papers related to assistive devices (Barker et al. 2006;
Cruice 2008; Henderson et al. 2008; Howe 2008). In addition to these four papers, Stephen
and Kerr (2000), Pape et al. (2002), Scherer and colleagues (Scherer et al. 2004; Scherer 2005,
2011; Scherer and Dicowden 2008, 2005), and Jahiel and Scherer (2010) pointed out that rel-
evant personal factors affect the use and abandonment of assistive devices, consistent with
Philips and Zhao's findings in 1993 in their famous research to determine how technology
users decide to accept or reject assistive devices: Three of four factors significantly related
to abandonment—lack of consideration of user opinion in selection, easy device procure-
ment, and change in user needs or priorities—were related to personal factors (Philips and
Zhao 1993).
Notwithstanding the scarcity in the attention given in international scientific litera-
ture to the role and competencies of the psychologist in the ATA process, it is universally
ascertained that personal factors are an essential and unavoidable dimension for the best
matching of user/client and device. This outlook has pushed scholars in the AT field to
reword AT as assistive solution to stress that it is more than a technological device for a
technical fix or to overcome a disablement (Roulstone 1998); it involves “something more
than just a device, it often requires a
mix
of mainstream and assistive technologies whose
assembly is different from one individual and another, and from one context to another”
(AAATE 2003).
A useful tool for identifying personal factors that might play a decisive role in success-
fully matching user/client and AT is provided by the paper of Pape and colleagues (2002).
In this review article, 81 publications are considered to individualize meanings assigned to
AT and how these personal meanings influence the integration of AT into daily activities
(p. 5). In addition to each personal factor code retrieved from the literature reviewed, the
paper offers a novel tool for seeking which meanings are ascribed to AT by individuals. A
topic guide
implemented by questioning routes makes up a worksheet for exploration of
personal factors. The questions are classified under two main criteria: disability types and
variation factors. The first relates to four disability types: disability due to aging, acquired
disability, congenital disability, and disability due to progressive disorder. The variation
factors relate to the type and morbidity of impairment, namely the peculiarities referable
to the body factors: impairment type and degree, illness type and severity, origin and
diagnosis of disability, and functional improvements. The authors then transformed the
personal factor concepts emerging from the 81 papers reviewed using operationally proba-
tive questions. These probative questions involve psychological, cultural, and adaptation
issues (Pape et al. 2002, p. 12).
