Dear sir, I have been going through some hard time deliberating on the best approach to substantiate my position

on the new topic. I know what I want to do and I know how to get there, but I have fears if the path I'm taking will not land me in trouble. My thoughts: (i) There are too many complexities in the construct and meanings attached to 'occupation', 'work' and 'job' particularly in defining sedentariness (I mean sedentary occupation (SO), sedentary work (SW) and sedentary job (SJ)), moreso that there is presently no reference other than dictionary meaning and I find this too speculative so to say. Take for instance, the concept of occupation has long defied satisfactory definition either by occupational therapists or occupational scientists. The only attempt so far was by Kielhofer (1985; 1995) and Nelson (1988; 1996). They have only been successful in giving it modest attention by describing it in a manner that would capture its structural complexity and reduce the ambiguity associated with uses of the term (Wu and Lin, 1999). A book (Perspectives on Human Occupation: Participation in Life (Nelson and Jepson Thomas, 2003) would have been useful too but occupation is as well seen to be a complex construct consisting of many interrelated concepts, each of which is complex in its own right ie SO, SW or SJ. This is a bit confusing for me because I do not wish to get into trouble if I choose to use SO, SW or SJ interchangeably. I also do not know how deep I can go to justify all these in my D9, that it will satisfy the reviewers. (ii) The other major bottleneck is the paradox of assessing health status of drivers. I have just come across papers on measurement of health status. I arrived there while brainstorming on how deep I should go and which elements will be sufficient to address concerns of drivers' health. I came across a particular paper that raises serious issues about selecting the suitable questionnaire that will fit into my study and I realized I may eventually run into trouble capturing health status of bus drivers. The paper exhaustively outlines a lot of measurement properties for selecting the appropriate questionnaire and it shattered my attempt to use questionnaire. The paper is titled 'Quality criteria were proposed for measurement properties of health status questionnaires (Terwee et al., 2007). Given the development, I am proposing to use employees' perceptions of health risks and doing interviews and focus group discussions alone, coupled with the preliminary literature search. But I don't know if this will be sufficient enough for a PhD and I am not sure if the subjective measurement will satisfy reviewers and examiners. References Kielhofner G. (1995). Ed, A model of human occupation: Theory and application. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD:Williams & Wilkins Kielhofner G. (1985). Ed, A model of human occupation: Theory and application. Baltimore, MD:Williams & Wilkins Nelson D.L. (1988). Occupation: Form and Performance. American journal of Occupational therapy. 42:633-641 Nelson D.L. (1996). Therapeutic occupation: A definition. American journal of Occupational therapy. 50:775-782

Terwee C.B., Bot S.D., de Boer M.R., van der Windt D.A.W.N., Knol D.L., Dekker J., Bouter L.M., de Vet H.C.W. (2007). Quality criteria were proposed for measurement properties of health status questionnaires. Journal of clinical epidemiology. 60:34-42. Wu C and Lin K. (1999). Defining Occupation: A comparative analysis. Journal of occupational science. 6(1):5-12.