Webinar Invitation: Why Do Disability Prevalence Estimates Vary?

Estimates of disability prevalence within the same country often vary across data sources. These differences may reflect the use of different definitions of disability, different question sets to identify the population with disabilities and different methods of data collection. These variations can create confusion for policymakers, researchers, and other data users.

The session will first explain how definitions of disability, question design and data collection methods influence who is identified as having disabilities. It will then present examples of prevalence estimates across data sources and illustrate how the choice of a data source can affect disaggregation of outcome measures by disability status. It will conclude with a panel discussion focused on practical guidance for data users including how to select appropriate data sources, interpret differences across datasets and communicate about variations in disability prevalence estimates.