This dissertation examines how disability researchers define disability. It is based on four studies. The first describes different definitions of disability in disability research. The second study is a conceptual analysis of the use of disability in a sample of disability research classics. In this study, it is evident that use of the concept is all but clear. It is concluded that especially environmentally based disability definitions would benefit from further empirical investigations. The notion that environmental factors (such as barriers) are a causal aspect of disability is rather widely accepted among disability researchers. However, it has not been empirically studied to such an extent that it is possible to construct workable theories of this relationship.The third study focuses on administrative definitions of disability and investigates the possibility of using data on disabled people that have been gathered by Swedish welfare authorities. It is concluded that rich data are available, but also that researchers must scrutinize how disability has been defined in these contexts. These authorities often start from medical understandings of disability, which may clash with contemporary understandings of disability as being environmentally based.The fourth study is a statistical analysis of the effects of different disability definitions on dependent variables. The analyses emphasize variables often included in studies of living conditions. There are major effects of choice of disability definition on the outcome in relation to such variables…
Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Why do Different Definitions Occur?
1.2 Aims of the Study
1.3 Disability in the Present Study
1.4 A Short Note on Disposition
2 Context and Methodology
2.1 Sorting the Field: Article I
2.2 Deepening the Analysis of Disability Concepts: Article II
2.3 Rich Data, but Bad Theories? Article III
2.4 Disability and Statistics: Article IV
2.5 A Pitiful Dichotomy
3. Categorizing People
4. Conclusions: The Future of Disability Definitions
4.1 Time to End
5. Summary of Articles
6. Acknowledgement
7. References
Author: Gronvik, Lars
Source: Uppsala University Library
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