Physical Demands of Army Military Occupational Specialties: Constructing and Applying a Crosswalk to Evaluate the Relationship between Occupational Physical Demands and Hospitalizations
Abstract
Army Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs) for enlisted Soldiers are categorized by their relative level of physical demands. This report compares injury rates among common MOSs stratified by light, moderate and heavy levels of physical job demands. As hypothesized, unadjusted odds for experiencing an injury hospitalization increased with increasing level of physical demand. On-duty serious accidents (those resulting in an injury hospitalization) also occurred more frequently among Soldiers in heavy demands jobs, with Soldiers in the heavy demands jobs of Infantrymen, Cavalry Scouts and Indirect Fire Infantrymen particularly at risk for on-duty injuries. In contrast, the odds of experiencing a hospitalization for "any-cause" were lowest for Soldiers in the highest physical demands jobs, followed by moderate demands jobs, with Soldiers in light demands jobs at greatest risk for any-cause hospitalization. The dynamic nature of MOS nomenclature over time makes the study of any temporal patterns or risk factors for injury or disability within an occupational cohort difficult. This report documents the technical and analytic steps taken in order to create a crosswalk for analyzing military occupation codes over time and associations with selected health outcomes. More research is needed to explore long-term chronic conditions and disability related to occupational physical demand and to clarify the independent influence of job demands once demographic factors are controlled.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA482364
Entities
People
- Ilyssa E. Hollander
- Marilyn Sharp
- Nicole S. Bell