 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Alice Wong, BA, Joseph T. Mullan, PhD, Mitchell P. LaPlante, PhD, and H. Stephen Kaye, PhD. Disability Statistics Center, Institute for Health and Aging, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street, Room 340, San Francisco, CA 94118, 415-502-7097, alwong1_99@yahoo.com
To date, Federal surveys have attempted to identify people with disabilities based on questions developed without the involvement and perspective of people with disabilities. Existing questions have been firmly based on a medical model, in which disability is seen as activities or functions the person cannot perform or has difficulty performing. The Disability Statistics Center's New Measures project aims to develop a concise, valid, and relevant set of questions to be used in national surveys that can more accurately identify the population with disabilities and more adequately assess their diverse experiences and activities. We report findings from our qualitative research and how the key themes formed the basis of our questions. People with various types of disabilities were encouraged to speak about their daily lives in focus groups and individual interviews. Striking similarities were found across groups in the topics that were discussed; six key themes were: doing things differently, problematic social interactions, the need for management strategies, problems in the physical environment, difficulties in personal functioning, and the 'work of disability.' By using themes and language as expressed by people with disabilities themselves, the New Measures project proposes to identify people with disabilities in surveys using a battery of questions that incorporate all of the key concepts we identified in our qualitative study. The questions focus primarily on how people with disabilities do their activities differently, rather than on things they cannot do or have difficulty doing.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Disability, Survey
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.