INTRODUCTION: OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF DISABILITY USING THE NHIS-D

Abstract

In spite of the challenges that disability measurement creates in interpretation of results, this volume contains an exciting variety of different types of papers that add not only to our information about persons with disabilities, but also serve as a useful guide to using this extensive data set to address the numerous questions about this population. Following an overview discussion about the development and production of the NHIS-D, this volume has four separate sections. In the first section three papers describing methodological issues in using the NHIS-D are presented. This section includes a paper on factors associated with response patterns (Hendershot et al.) and another on a strategy to overcome the problems of missing data (Witt et al.). The third paper examines disability prevalence by interpreting the NHIS-D data into domains of the ICF classification (Fedeyko & Lollar). The next section contains three papers which focus on work and health care for adults with disabilities (disability measured in different ways), particularly the barriers they experience in those areas. Included in this group are papers on barriers to work (Loprest & Maag), barriers to preventive care (Jones & Beatty), and the effect of insurance as a facilitator and barrier to health care for mobility limited adults (Iezzoni et al.). The third section of four papers focuses on developmental disabilities. Larson et al. discuss the variety of definitions of developmental disability and how those definitions can be operationalized with the measures used in the NHIS-D. Two of the papers examine the outcomes or consequences of childhood disability. Honeycutt et al. focus on the economic costs of developmental disability across the life-span and Maag examines the unmet need for supportive services for this population. Hogan et al. also looks at consequences for siblings of children with disabilities. This section can also be viewed as a methodological one providing a variety of ways to measure developmental disabilities within the same data source. The next section looks at the needs and characteristics of two specific populations; Native Americans (Altman & Rasch), and adult women with MR/DD (Anderson et al.). It also contains a unique approach to understanding the effects of two different aspects of disability, the age of onset of the disability and the proportion of life lived with a disability (Verbrugge & Yang). The book concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of NHIS-D work (Drabeck).

Citation

Altman, B.M. and Barnartt, S.N. (2003), "INTRODUCTION: OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF DISABILITY USING THE NHIS-D", Altman, B.M., Barnartt, S.N., Hendershot, G.E. and Larson, S.A. (Ed.) Using Survey Data to Study Disability: Results from the National Health Survey on Disability (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 3), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3547(03)03001-X