Development of an Internationally Comparable Disability Measure for Censuses: Challenges and Opportunities

Disability is conceptualized as arising from the interaction of a person’s functional status with their physical, cultural, and policy environments. If the environment one lives in is designed for the full range of human functioning and incorporates appropriate accommodations and support mechanisms, then people with functional limitations would be able to fully participate in society. The equalization of opportunities is among the major targets of the UN Convention on the Rights of Person’s with Disabilities – and was selected as the purpose for developing the set of questions described here. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) developed by the World Health Organization has played a pivotal role in realizing this conceptualisation of disability. This approach to disability has required the development of new measurement tools for use in both censuses and surveys. Earlier impairment-based approaches to disability measurement focused on medical conditions and asked some variation of the question: Do you have a disability? The current focus of measurement expresses the social model of disability and has shifted to eliciting experienced difficulties in functioning in a set of basic action domains.