Box 2 Disability measurement and monitoring using the Washington Group Short Set of Questions on Disabilit

Box 2: Disability measurement and monitoring using the Washington Group Short Set of Questions on Disability Not all people have the same understanding of what disability means. Therefore it is important that the questions used to obtain disability data are appropriately designed and implemented. The Washington Group Question sets are intended to facilitate the comparison of data on disability cross-nationally. They are derived from the WHO’s bio-psychosocial concept of disability and its International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF). The Short Set of Questions on Disability (WG-SS) is designed to be used in conjunction with other measurement tools within a larger survey or registration process to enable disaggregation of other population measures (e.g. age or sex) by disability status. The focus on functioning and the brevity of the tool mean that it can be relatively easily used in a variety of settings, including, potentially, humanitarian response contexts. The questions intentionally do not use the word ‘disability’, but instead ask people how much difficulty they have performing basic universal activities in each domain (walking, seeing, hearing, cognition, self-care and communication) with answers categorised into ‘no difficulty’/‘some’/‘a lot’/‘cannot do it at all’. Disability is determined, according to the WG-SS, as anyone having at least ‘a lot of difficulty’ on at least one of the six questions. The WG-SS will identify most but not all people with disabilities. Longer ‘Enhanced’ and ‘Extended’ question sets include questions on mental health/psychosocial functioning, and the Washington Group has developed a Module on Child Functioning in conjunction with UNICEF to identify a fuller range of childhood disability for children and youth aged 2–4 and 5–17.