Disability status

10. Does [the respondent] have seeing, hearing, speaking, standing/walking/sitting, body movement, non-functional upper and lower limbs? Or learning difficulties, mental, problem or other mental/physical damage?

These three questions will be asked to collect information on disability, type of disability and cause of disability as well as mental problem. Question 10 will be asked to identify whether each member of a household is disabled or has mental problem and for members of the household who are disabled type and cause of disability codes will be marked under question 11and 12 respectively. For members who have mental problems however, after recording types of disability question 12 will be skipped to question 13 as this question is not relevant for them. But those household members who have both problems meaning disability and mental problem are considered as disabled and code related to disability will be marked for them.

Question 10:- Does [the respondent] have seeing, hearing, speaking, standing, walking, sitting, body movement, non functional upper and lower limbs difficulties, mental problem or other mental/physical damage?

This question is used to verify whether or not each household members of the household has disability or mental problem. Since the question above is too long and the space is not adequate it is not provided on the questionnaire. Hence, note is given on questionnaire against its question number. Based on the note provided enumerators should read word by word for each respondents while interviewing from the inside cover of enumerator's manual or from laminated code folder. Though it is not difficult to identify persons who have mental problems, identification of the disabled members in each household is difficult and needs great care as it is not an easy task to verify whether there are disabled persons or not.

A person is called disabled if during birth or after birth his body part or his mental is damaged, lack of body part or congenital malformation and fails to do activities that other persons who have no such problems could do. In other expression, disabled are blinds or who have seeing problem, those who cannot totally hear or have hearing problems, who cannot totally speak or have speaking problems, who have body movement problem, non functional upper and lower limbs and includes those who has mental problems. Leprosy and epilepsy diseases are not on their own considered as disability. However, it should be noted that leprosy and epilepsy diseases could be causes of disability.

Though damage, lack of body part or congenital malformation are causes of disability, it should be noted that defects or lack of body part may not always lead to disability.

Example:
Even though it is a lack of body part, one eye blind person will not be considered as disabled if he/she has no seeing difficulty in the remaining one eye;
A person who does not totally hear with one of his/her ears will not be considered as disabled if hears clearly with other ear.
A person whose one his/her figure is cut is not regarded as disabled unless he/she has difficulty of walking due to this problem event though it is clearly a lack of body part.

Therefore, during data collection on disability enumerators should clearly explain to the respondents about disability using examples.

The word disability may not be clear for the respondents and they may regard as a disability those damages or lack of body part that might cause a disability. For instance, they may respond as disabilities body part problems which could cause of disability such as one eye blindness or seeing difficulty, one ear deafness or hearing problem, etc. Hence, enumerators should make great effort by posing additional questions and by probing respondents `to avoid not to wrongly record as disabled those who shouldn't and not to omit persons who are disabled.

Enumerators should address question 11 to each members of the household in person in order to identify household members with disability or ask a legible person, who can give complete information about the whole household members, to verify whether each one is disabled or not by mentioning their name one by one and then mark the correct code.

In addition, experiences obtained from other countries show that to simplify further the problem associated with the administration of question 10 mentioned above, inserting the name of each member in the space provided and explicitly addressing the question to the respondent is found to be useful. Hence, enumerators are expected to make efforts to collect adequate information on disability using this method.

Thus, as indicated above after addressing the question to each household member for those who have disability corresponding to the alternative response Yes mark code 1 then the next question meaning type of disability will be asked ; for those who has no disability mark code 2 corresponding to the alternative response No and then pass to question 13.

Note: Persons who couldn't perform some activities due to old age shouldn't be considered as disabled. But it should be born in mind that amongst the aged people there could be disabled persons.