Disability Data Measures project: Key findings in plain language

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Department of Health, Disability and Ageing ran the Disability Data Measures project. The aim of the project was to investigate a nationally consistent approach to collecting data about disability in surveys and across services. The project followed the Disability Royal Commission recommendations. It was the first step in looking at how to ask a few simple and consistent questions about disability in surveys in Australia.

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We talked with the disability community, research experts and government organisations to understand:

• what disability data they need
• the best way to collect disability data.

We looked at the different questions that organisations have used to collect disability data in Australia and internationally. Then we came up with different questions about disability. We tested them with people with and without disability to find out which ones worked best.

We found that it’s better if organisations that collect data about disability use the same questions and concepts to measure disability. 

We also found that it’s better to ask a few questions instead of just one to find out if someone has a disability. For example, a single question to find out if someone has a disability is easy to answer, but the response may not give us all the information we need. We need to do more work to understand how asking a single question affects data when compared to asking a few questions.

The more questions you ask, the clearer and more detailed information you can get about someone with disability. For example, the amount of support they might need. 

Before we can say more about which set of questions is best to use, we need to talk more with people in the disability community, researchers and government organisations. This will help us better understand: 

• what concepts we should measure
• how to collect disability data using a few short questions. 

We also need to do more testing to figure out which disability questions work best.