Search results

The following is a reaction to the new developments in measurement language and the approaches to definitions of disability developed through the revisions of the ICIDH and the resulting ICF. It provides the view of an individual who has lived with limitations as well as an individual who has served as the president of an international disability organization.

The participants, who included statisticians from offices in national statistical systems in addition to representatives of the disability community, academic researchers in the field of disability statistics and users of disability data, were provided background documents to facilitate the discussion of the issues. Those documents represented materials from the U.N., the World Health Organization and Eurostat and included the Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 1, and the International Classification of Functioning, Disabilities and Health (ICF).

This volume is divided into three sections providing: information about the background of the development of this international effort to develop culturally compatible measures of disability for use worldwide; examples of what kind of measures are currently in place in a variety of countries; and finally, some examples of the exciting methodological work that is underway to improve measurement and provide the ability to make comparisons cross-nationally.

Barbara M. Altman, a sociologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland is currently a special assistant on Disability Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently involved in revision of the measures of disability in the American Community Survey and has a key role in the Washington Group, an international group seeking to develop culturally compatible measures of disability worldwide. Her disability research interests focus in three areas: disability definition and measurement in survey data; access to, financing and utilization of health care services by persons with disabilities, particularly working-age persons and women with disabilities; and disability among minority groups. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on disability topics, and she is currently co-editor of the series Research in Social Science and Disability.