Comments on the Washington Group

Position Paper

Proposed Purpose of an Internationally

Comparable General Disability Measure

Alicia Bercovich

IBGE Brazil

World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons*

Goals To promote the participation of persons with

disabilities in all aspects of life • preventing the onset and consequences of

impairments, • promoting optimal levels of functioning, • equalizing opportunities for participation.

*United Nations, New York, 1983

Framework

• The International Classification of Functioning and Disability (ICF) is a guide for the measurement design.

Purposes of the harmonized mensuration of disability

• to provide services, including the development of programs and polices for service provision and the evaluation of these programs and services,

• to monitor the level of functioning in the population,

• to assess equalization of opportunities.

International relevance and feasibility of implementation

Relevance

o Is the purpose of relatively equal importance across countries with respect to policy?

Feasibility

o Is it possible to collect the proposed information using a comparable general disability measure that includes a small set of census-like questions?

Evaluation of purposes Relevance and Feasibility

• Provision of Services Relevance (yes) Feasibility (no)

• Monitoring the level of functioning in the population

Relevance (yes) Feasibility (no)

• Assessing equalization of opportunityRelevance (yes) Feasibility (yes)

Purpose for the measure

• Assessment of equalization of opportunities as the purpose for the first general disability measure to be developed by the WG.

Benefits • Identification of a broad subpopulation, which can be further

described using detailed information obtained via extended survey sets.

Limitations • the general disability measure developed to suit the proposed

purpose may not suit other purposes• no comprehensive assessment of disability or identification

of the “true” disabled population• Lacking information about mechanisms that facilitate

participation• Groups related to the NGO’s on Disability and other related

Organizations are not encouraging the identification of a large subpopulation of people with disability

Transition to Measurement

Measuring Activity and Participation

• Willful actions

• Specific tasks

• Organized activity

• Information considered indication of participation

Some Comments (I)

• Necessity of Harmonization to have meaningful and comparable measures

• Cultural Differences between countries continue to affect comparability

• The need for the Census and Surveys teams tounderstand the purpose

• Training people in the technical and operational teams

• To achieve a concrete set of questions recommended for insertion in Censuses and Surveys

Some Comments (II)

• Minimum set of Questions recommended• Questions must be operationalized by the

countries according to local characteristics• Pilot tests harmonized and analyzed• Documentation of the results of the tests• Recommendations on Editing and Imputation

of the new variables• Analyzing the results: standardization of a

minimal set of checks to be performed at the country level

More Comments (III)

• Documentation on the limitations on comparability due to cultural and contextual factors for each one of the participating countries

• Statistical measures on the accuracy of results (to establish comparisons)

End