Disability

Kia ora and greetings! My name is Tom and I work for Statistics NZ. I’m here to make sure that we have a fantastic discussion on disability and the census. Click here to introduce yourself on the welcome and introductions page.

It would be great to hear what you think about the recommendation above!

Hi Tom,
More disaggregated data on Disabled people in NZ needs to be collected. This is one of the findings of the United Nations when they reviewed NZ's implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in 2014. See: http://www.odi.govt.nz/what-we-do/un-convention/monitoring-implementation/2014-review.html
There are many groups of data that would be beneficial to the disability and other sectors to have, however a group I am connected with needs data on former refugees with disabilities living in NZ. Stats NZ tells us the group is too small as it would make people identifiable, however this is a group falling through the cracks between services and without knowing how many people and what types of disabilities we are talking about we are struggling to know how to help them. I think if Stats NZ took the UNCRPD definition of disability (which includes Mental Health - anxiety, depression, PTSD etc.) you would find that the group is not that small/ identifiable.

Hi Tom
I've read the preliminary view of the census content. For starters I have some questions about the disability section - mainly points of clarification. I also have some points of my own to raise, but I need to be clear about the preliminary view first. My questions are:
A. (p.61) The 2nd paragraph. I understand the reason for redesigning the disability qns in 2013, but the rest of that paragraph puzzles me - "These changes were meant to improve the efficiency of sample selection...." but "did not significantly improve the identification of the disabled population." How do you know how well you've identified the disabled population if you haven't got a satisfactory way of sampling it? How can you tell whether you've improved the quality of the questions, or not?
B. re the last sentence in that paragraph: what other social surveys are you thinking of including disability questions in? Why?
C. or will my questions be thrashed out by the joint working group referred to in paragraph 3? Can you tell us more about this working group?
D. (p.62) "We recommend that disability be included in the 2018 Census to support the selection of a survey sample only if a disability-specific household survey is to be carried out in 2018." Does this mean that a post-census disability survey may not be carried out in 2018? Please explain?
The sections of the preliminary view I'm asking about give the impression that there's been quite a bit of discussion and analysis on these points, maybe even some reports or discussion papers. They're all issues I've puzzled over and would like a bit more information before I toss my thoughts into the ring.
Many thanks L

I am the voluntary policy advisor to Age Concern NZ and a Senior Associate of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Information on disability is valuable for policy development in an ageing population. Sample surveys do not allow sufficient breakdown by age. 65 plus is not adequate.

Thanks for your comment Judith. There is a thread for the question on age here. It would be great to hear your thoughts on the age variable there as well

Thanks for your questions @lynleyhood. Those involved with working on the area of disability statistics have given me some responses to pass on. As the responses indicate discussion and analysis of this area is on-going currently.

a) The Disability Survey sample includes people who are non-disabled according to the census questions as well as people who are disabled. Those who are disabled according to the census just have a higher chance of being included in the survey.

All selected survey respondents are then asked a more detailed set of questions about difficulty with activities (eg difficulty walking up or down a flight of stairs) and these questions are used to determine whether the respondent is disabled according to the survey definition.

After the Disability Survey we can compare how people answered the census disability questions and the Disability Survey questions. For example, we can look at the percentage of people who were identified as non-disabled according to the census questions and disabled according to the detailed Disability Survey questions. We can also look at the characteristics of those people. This gives us information about how well the census questions worked at identifying survey disabled people, and whether the questions worked better at identifying certain groups of people.

For more information about the Disability Survey, please see http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/health/disabilities.aspx. The 2013 Information release contains information on data quality and definitions.

b) Submissions have been received asking that disability questions be included in the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) and the General Social Survey (GSS). Any decision on this will be part of the working group consultation.

c) The working group will be set up by the Office for Disability Issues. The group has not yet been formed.

d) It is under review.

Following on from discussions at todays meeting in Auckland - I feel that the current disability data that is provided through the actual census needs to be published to allow other sectors outside the health and disability sector to have some sort of data that can be cross referenced with age, sex, ethnicity etc at a more local level

Many thanks for your useful explanation, Digby. Sorry I’ve been slow to respond. Now I’ve got the time, I can resume the conversation.

To provide a sound basis for service planning, disability stats need to be as reliable as possible. The post-census disability survey sampling process starts with the relevant census questions, but I’m going start with the disability survey results and work back.

As I understand it, the disability related questions in the census were the same until 2013, but some of the questions in the post-census disability surveys varied.

The first two post-census disability surveys found that the overall disability rate was much the same in both surveys. This prompted self-congratulatory comments about the soundness of the methods and the usefulness of the survey. When the disability rate fell in the 2006 survey, the methods were independently checked and found to be reliable, but I can find no analysis of why the rate fell that year. Indeed the 2006 results seem to have been airbrushed out of the discussion. When the disability rate rose in 2013, we were invited to compare the 2013 figure with the 2001 figure. IMO if we don’t understand why the rate went down in 2006, we are ill-equipped to understand why the rate went up in 2013.

I looked at Statistics NZ’s progress indicators. As far as I could see the only indicators that went up or down 2006, and returned back the other way in 2013 were the employment/unemployment rates. I suspect that if more disabled people were employed in 2006, they would be more likely to give a positive answer to the question about being able to do things that other people their age could do because they’d have more disposable income, but that’s just speculation.

***** has any analysis been done that might explain the drop in the disability rate in the 2006 post-census survey?

I am particularly interested in the dramatic increase in the rate of visual impairment in adults between the 2001 and 2013 post-census disability surveys. I’ll attach my two papers published in NZ Optics on this matter (with very helpful input from Michelle Vincent).

In summary, the disability survey results showed a 100% increase in visual impairment in adults between 2001 and 2013. The greatest increase was in people under 65 years. If this increase is real, its implications for our health service and our society are huge. (Before anyone leaps in with questions, please read the attached papers in which several hypotheses are tested).

There’s evidence that specific questions are more likely to prompt positive answers than general ones, so I’ll assume that’s the case with the new disability question in the 2013 census. My questions relate to where in the sampling process the huge increase in visual disability appeared -

**** was the increase in disability recorded in response to the new census question of similar magnitude for all the disabilities listed, i.e. seeing; hearing; walking, lifting or bending; using your hands to grasp or use objects; learning concentrating or remembering etc etc? Or was the increase greatest for the top item on the list and lower on items further down the list? The hypothesis I’m testing here is that people faced with a list of disabilities might give the top item more attention than the ones further down the list, regardless their specific disabilities.

**** when you compared how people answered the disability questions in the census with how they answered the questions in the disability survey, was the variation similar for all disabilities? Was there anything distinctive about variations in visual impairment reports between the census and the survey, compared to variations in reports with other disabilities? Did the reports of visual impairment start high in the census and come down a bit in the survey, or start lower in the census and rise in the survey, or stay high in both?

Sorry to have gone on a bit. I await your comments with interest. I hope I can successfully attach the NZ Optics papers.

Hi

I attended the workshop in Hamilton last week and found the conversation very interesting.

I work as an Access Co-ordinator at CCS Disability Action. My colleague and I have a particular interest in accessibility of the transport system for disabled people. I'm a wheelchair user myself by the way.

Many disabled people don't have independent access to a motor vehicle nor do they have a driver's licence. This makes their journeys necessarily more complex and time consuming than those of people using a vehicle, with a greater reliance on footpaths, walkways, public transport, taxis and community transport services.

It would be really helpful to have data about disability, specifically from Q16 in the previous Census, released down to local level. This would assist local transport planners to develop transport models that include disabled people, we're currently absent, and prioritise transport infrastructure maintenance and improvements in a way that includes specific knowledge of the demographic makeup of pedestrian and public transport catchments. For example, if the demographic data shows that there is a cluster of people in a particular area with significant visual impairment, council would have a vital piece of evidence to add to a business case for a higher investment in road crossing infrastructure that would keep these people safe crossing the road.

Currently, as I understand the situation, there is no Census data released about disability down to local area level, so inclusion of our requirements within any system or process has to be done during a consultation process. I believe it would be more equitable for disabled people if their demographic information was available alongside everyone else's in their community.

Hi @lynleyhood, we are in the process of putting together a response to your question. As you can imagine it's taking a while to pull everything together. We should be able to provide you with an answer sometime this week. Thanks for commenting!