Review of Practices in Less Developed Countries on the Collection of Disability Data

The aim of the paper is to review the experiences of developing countries in collecting disability data with regard to the methods and definitions used. The review is based on data in the United Nations Disability Statistics Database, version 2 (DISTAT-2). We analyze the prevalence rates of disability in relation to the characteristics of questions used to identify persons with disabilities and the relationship between disability prevalence and other social and economic indicators. The wide difference in approaches used by countries to identify persons with disabilities result in very different rates of disability prevalence, thus making the comparison of these rates very problematic. The paper gives suggestions on how to improve methods to collect data on disability.