Distribution of Prevalence Estimates of People with Disabilities Across National Surveys

Understanding the variation of statistics generated from national surveys is essential to creating relevant and impactful policy for people with disabilities.  Over the past two decades there has been substantial effort to improve national surveillance and data collection methods for people with disabilities.  The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) supported improving these survey methods followed by the Affordable Care Act’s (2010) mandating standardized questions in national health surveys identifying people with disabilities.  The U.S. Census Bureau content-tested a six-questions-sequence (6QS) for self-reporting difficulties with vision, hearing, cognition, mobility, dressing and going outside the home.  However, there has been limited research examining the variation among estimates resulting from national surveys asking the 6QS.

To address this, we estimate national prevalence rates for people with disabilities across surveys, disability type, and basic demographic factors from the first year of 6QS use, 2011.  This effort compared prevalence rates among working-age (25-61) people living in the community from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), Current Population Survey (CPS), and the American Housing Survey (AHS).  Disability prevalence was statistically and substantially different across surveys and each of the six difficulties.  Among working-age people living in the community, the overall disability prevalence from the NHIS, SIPP, CPS and AHS were 18,334,000 (+/-933,000), 16,506,900 (+/-623,000), 12,094,000 (+/-367,000), and 9,192,000 (+/-335,000), respectively. Variation of this magnitude has far reaching implications for disability surveillance, policy, and resource allocation.  Further research is needed to better understand and explain statistical variation across surveys.