Title:	International Measurement of Disability
Authors:	Barbara M. Altman Sathi Alur
Keywords:	Disability
Issue Date:	2016
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	In 2015 as this book is written, the Washington City Group on Disability Statistics (WG) will have been in existence for 13 years having had their fi rst meeting in February 2002. It was called into being at the end of a large international meeting on the status of disability statistics which was organized by the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD). Over those 13 years, 130 countries have been involved with the group’s work, at one point or another (see Chap. 3). Recently it became obvious to those involved in the work that we had been so busy working on improving disability measurement cross-nationally that a lot of the details of the work associated with the focus on developing internationally comparable measurement of disability were not getting disseminated as widely as they should. Although the work in progress and the presentations from each meeting are disseminated through the United Nations and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) websites (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/washington_group.htm ) and a report is made to the United Nations Statistical Commission annually, the fi nished products such as testing protocols, new methodologies, country experiences, and results from use of questions in national censuses have not been distributed widely, particularly in research literature. Therefore, in order to provide more detailed information to the statistical and research communities and to fi nd another source to inform the international public, particularly the international population with disabilities and organizations working with populations with disability, the focus of this volume is to provide details about the products and ongoing activities of the Washington Group. We have included fi nished products, national experiences, methodology advances, and fi rst results from census uses of questions developed by the WG, and fi nally we provide information on future plans of the Washington Group. In the context of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the measurement of disability in national censuses and surveys is more important than ever. Understanding the age, gender, participation and locations of persons with disabilities, and the types of functional limitations they experience will help tremendously with the promotion and protection of the full and equal enjoyment of human rights, dignity, and freedoms for all persons with physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments.throughout the world. Measurement or counting through censuses and/or surveys can contribute immeasurably to policy development and monitoring improvement in regional, national, and international promotion of equalization of opportunities for persons with disabilities. Hopefully this volume will act as a stimulus for the inclusion of disability measurement in censuses and surveys by all Member States of the United Nations and encourage the production and dissemination of information about persons with disability by the Member States. In 2003 the United Nations Statistical Commission emphasized the need to insure the collection of internationally comparable statistics on disability and approved the collection of disability statistics on a regular basis through the United Nations Demographic Yearbook system using the Human Functioning and Disability Questionnaire developed by UNSD for this purpose. The Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 2, the current revision underway, not only recommend the inclusion of disability characteristics as a census topic, but the incorporation of the Washington Group Short Set as an example of an acceptable set of questions (United Nations, 2015). It is important that Member States who have not yet begun collecting data about disability in their nations begin to do so and that all Member States contribute this information to the Demographic Yearbook on a regular basis so that the CRPD and MDGs have this information available for their activities.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/54194
ISBN:	978-3-319-28498-9
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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