We’ve been struggling for a while to define and delineate a concept about the activities an individual does during their day – do they do paid work, unpaid work, are they a student, are they unemployed and seeking work, unemployed and not seeking work, retired, carer, are they a young child or infant, or something else? There may be multiple, like both studying and working.
A lot of feedback has been that we should constrain this to just employment, ie paid work. That would make the definition simple, but that’s not the concept we’re trying to define. We’ve been thinking about things like role in life, socio-economic or psychosocial activity situation, or activity in daily life. The first is rather vague, the second isn’t really a common expression, and the third feels too close to “ADL”, which is normally thought of functional assessments like whether you can take care of your own hygiene and nutrition.
A typical question that would lead to this concept could be “What do you do?”.
We’d really appreciate any ideas for what words or phrases we should use to name and describe this concept!
Kind regards, Silje Ljosland Bakke
Information Architect, RN
Coordinator, National Editorial Board for Archetypes
Nasjonal IKT HF, Norway
The only correct and natural answer to the question is: ‘living’.
Humankind and its culture encompasses broad and very detailed activities.
It is ALL we do, or don't do, in this World
From work to cleaning ones nose, talking with the neighbour, or doing nothing but being bored.
In order to answer this question one needs to scope the context, the reason why one wants to know and record it.
Questions that need to be answered first:
Why do you ask the question?
And for what purpose will you use the answer?
The consensus view from the Apperta crew (over beer, so treat with caution) is that ‘Occupation’ is fine. In UK use this would be seen more broadly than employment to include ‘what do you do?’ student, carer, child, child carer, Xbox carer, whatever.
My guess is that there is no such single word or phrase for this but I would offer ‘main preoccupation’ or even ‘main preoccupation or work’ and then add a scope not saying it does not need to be paid work
Without getting into all the obvious philosophical rabbit holes, a term I have seen used for (some of) this is ‘social history’ (a bit like ‘natural history’ for a particular kind of animal).
As per a previous recommendation by Thomas regarding introducing ontological structure to the openEHR domain it might be interesting to see what the Ontology of General Medical Science https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/OGMS
I’d say this fits well under the umbrella term of Social History (though this includes family relationships as well so depends on what the plan is precisely with the archetype) as Thomas mentions.
Otherwise ‘Occupation’ as Ian states is my go to for the more precise ‘what do you do?’ Actually that is almost the precise phrase I use when eliciting ‘occupation’ in a history, so I would understand that term immediately if it were presented in an archetype.
Evidently all this is the realm of occupational therapy. I know they use various models of occupation and activity both broadly defined. I do not known if there are any OTs on this list - am not one myself - but wonder woukd this be useful
For me the best way to describe this concept is ‘life role’ or possibly lifestyle and occupation. We all adopt various roles in life that indicate the types of activities we primarily engage in or what occupies and shapes our mental state and sense of well-being. Sometimes being a Mum totally occupies one’s life, but this changes over time. Many of us juggle our time between multiple roles.
I just realised that the choices we make regarding roles and activities that occupy our time is also associated with the image of ourselves we like to project to the world at large. This is closely associated with occupation.
A man came upon a construction site where four people were working.
He asked the first, “What are you doing?” and the man replied: “I am
laying bricks.”
He asked the second, “What are you doing?” and the man replied: “I am
building a wall.”
As he approached the third, he heard him humming a tune as he worked,
and asked, “What are you doing?” The man smiled, “I am building a
cathedral!”
The forth was very concentrated, nearly ecstatic, and when asked “What
are you doing?”, looked up at the sky, and answered, “I am working for
the sake of God!”
I also liked Bert’s “Only the first man was reflecting the truth because, laying bricks, you do alone, the rest you do together with others”
To sum it up (my own way):
When asking someone what he does (in life or even for a living), the answer - from people doing the very same thing - can range from very mundane to fully inspirational.
In health, all answers are plainly valid, and it would be a terrible mistake to only take into account the technical description. We are all, on this list, working to save lives, to have suffering people heal, to open the way for a better world… and we are also all spending most of our time typing on a computer keyboard (be it code or projects sheet, etc). It is true that typing allows us to benefit from several years of life when compared to those who are pneumatic drilling outside… but it doesn’t define who we are.
Bert reminds us that the most important part is always done with others… meaning that “what do you do?” could be better expressed as “what is your social network?”.
It may remain a little bit theoretical or philosophical, but the “individuation” concept states that, to become a better self, one should find her best place as a service provider to her network (hence opposed to “individualism”… and also opposed to finding a comfortable slot in a hierarchy).
This to say that a human being is a complex biological entity part of a complex social network and that taking care of her can never be achieved in a reductionist way. So, “what do you do?”, “what is your social network?” and “who are you?” are three very connected questions.
I stop there… my virtual foreman reminds me that I don’t make a living from posting on this list
I agree with Philippe.
The world is complex.
A very generic question can be answered from various points of view.
The WHO ICF classification might be the resource to rely on.
The attached picture is an overview of the most relevant points of view.
Before the question is asked ‘what do you do’ one needs to provide the context.
Be it: on human body function, human activity or Participation as social activity with others.
