The framework starts with the goals of Life's Activities. Life's activities can be described through physical and cognitive requirements. The cognitive requirements describe the mental workload and attention demands required. Personal modifiers include those factors that impact the way an activity is performed that are specific to an individual. They may be physiological, medical, or psychological.
Personal modifiers can also be the result of work style or ergonomics knowledge.
Psychosocial modifiers, that are cultural, organizational or social in nature, may also exert an effect on the outcome of performing life's activities. These modifiers must be known before the activity can be quantified. The third component of the framework, the Outcomes, represents the health outcomes that an individual experiences in response to the performance of life's activities in the presence of personal, task and psychosocial modifiers. These outcomes are variable, idiosyncratic, and occur along a spectrum of severity ranging from positive, to neutral, to transient or chronic effects or to a disorder. It is important to note that positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes are possible from all of life's activities.