The Washington Group Blog

Researchers at the International Centre for Evidence in Disability used the Washington Group tools to estimate the prevalence of disability and its relation to outcomes like education and employment in Cameroon, Guatemala, India, and Nepal. They find significant evidence that people with disabilities are more likely to be excluded.

Writing effective questions that produce reliable data requires testing. Cognitive interviewing is an important methodology for making sure that respondents are interpreting the questions as they are intended.

A follow-up to Sightsaver’s previous blog entry in this series, this entry explains the key findings from using the Washington Group questions in a programmatic setting: words matter, education on the WG Short Set is essential, practice makes perfect, inclusive data collection generates demand, and intersectionality is critical.

The WG-SS identifies most people with disabilities. While 6 questions cannot identify everyone, the population identified by the WG-ss is well-understood, appropriate, and valuable for many purposes – including monitoring the CRPD and SDG disaggregation by disability.

Sightsavers recounts their efforts to use the WG-SS in a programmatic setting in several developing countries. They found it made an enormous difference in their ability to identify people with disabilities.

The WG-SS goes beyond identifying those who would be eligible for specific disability programs. This blog explores the difference between identifying people with disabilities for statistical purposes and disability eligibility determination for social protection programs.

The WG-SS questions are designed in a manner – both conceptually and practically – that makes them an excellent tool for disaggregating SDG indicators by disability.

Responses to surveys are very sensitive to how questions are worded. This blog summarizes the methodology recommended by the WG for translating the WG question sets in a manner that preserves the reliability of the data collected.

The social model of disability is a complex model that incorporates the interaction between people’s functional limitations and barriers in the environment. This blog entry explains how the social model informed the development of the WG questions and explains how the questions flow from it, and how they can be used in analysis consistent with the social model.