College of Education and Social Services

Center on Disability and Community Inclusion

Show Me the Disability Data

An ongoing conversation about the questions we ask

Representation in data is a disability equity issue.

Research Study Findings | November 2022

Right now, we ask event attendees about “their relationship to disability”.

"What is your relationship to disability?"

Youth or young adult with disability
Adult with a disability
Self-advocate
Peer-advocate
Parent or caregiver
Ally
Professional working with people with disabilities

But...12% of attendees choose not to answer. So how can we be more inclusive?

What if we used the Washington Group questions instead?

The Washington Group Questions

Do you have difficulty seeing?
Do you have difficulty hearing?
Do you have difficulty walking or climbing steps?
Do you have difficulty remembering or concentrating?
Do you have difficulty with self-care, such as washing all over or dressing?
Using your usual language, do you have difficulty communicating or being understood?

If we use a measure of disability domains in our demographics surveys, then we could directly compare our data with population data.

110,014 adults in Vermont have a disability. This is equal to 21% or 1 in 5 adults in Vermont.

Percentage of adults in Vermont with select functional disability types:

9% Cognition
8% Mobility
6% Independent Living
5% Hearing
3% Vision
2% Self-Care

If we adapt that measure of disability domains to be part of our registration:

mobile phone screen showing text: Please describe if you would benefit from accommodations to address: difficulty seeing, difficulty hearing, difficulty moving, difficulty remembering, difficulty caring for yourself.

Then we can better design for the accessibility needs of our participants.

A grid of people icons. Each person has a marker of a different disability: glasses, hearing aids, a cast, a wheelchair. And some have no markers of disability.

Why is this research important?

Representation in data is a health equity issue.

This poster session describes what we're trying to do at our organization to improve how much people with disabilities are represented in our data, and how well they can access our services. We want to start conversations with other people and organizations about how they look for disability data. A key part of equity is improving our understanding of the disability community, and improving how well we connect with that community.

Both the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (2006) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development call for collecting and sharing disability facts in all data sets.

How we ask about disability experience matters.

We chose to look at The Washington Group Questions because those questions were developed specifically to help find out more about disability in data sets. These questions might be really useful for designing more accessible trainings, events, and resources.

Center on Disability and Community Inclusion

College of Education and Social Services

Center on Disability and Community Inclusion

Show Me the Disability Data

An ongoing conversation about the questions we ask

Representation in data is a disability equity issue.

Right now, we ask event attendees about “their relationship to disability”.

Youth or young adult with disability

Adult with a disability

Self-advocate

Peer-advocate

Parent or caregiver

Ally

Professional working with people with disabilities

But...12% of attendees choose not to answer. So how can we be more inclusive?

What if we used the Washington Group questions instead?

The Washington Group Questions

Do you have difficulty seeing?

Do you have difficulty hearing?

Do you have difficulty walking or climbing steps?

Do you have difficulty remembering or concentrating?

Do you have difficulty with self-care, such as washing all over or dressing?

Using your usual language, do you have difficulty communicating or being understood?

If we use a measure of disability domains in our demographics surveys, then we could directly compare our data with population data.

If we adapt that measure of disability domains to be part of our registration:

Then we can better design for the accessibility needs of our participants.

Why is this research important?

Representation in data is a health equity issue.

Contact the Author

Adrienne Miao(She/Her)

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