The role of rehabilitation engineers in vocational rehabilitation agency settings is essentially undefined in spite of years of debate and discussion. This survey found that there were over 60 different job titles held by the 121 individuals who completed the Rehabilitation Engineer Profile. These duties were listed, broken down into job tasks, and compiled into a questionnaire sent to 215 individuals who were identified as rehabilitation engineering service providers by VR agencies nationwide. Reminder post cards were sent out three months after the questionnaires in an attempt to improve the response rate.
All responses are confidential and anonymous.
Each of the major job task categories was broken down into job tasks as specified by the focus group. Within each major category, an other category was provided in case there was a job task that clearly fit within the category, but was not covered in any of the more specific job task descriptions. Additionally, a sixth major category of other was included in case there was a major job area being performed by rehabilitation engineers that was not identified by the focus group. There were very few responses in any of the other categories. Under the Research category, no other tasks were listed.