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Abstract:
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In 2018, the content and structure of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) will be updated, in part to shorten the length of the questionnaire and harmonize overlapping content. One area where current content overlaps is disability. Understanding the nature of these multiple measures of disability, including to what degree they identify the same populations, is important for preparing for the 2018 changes. In 2011-12, roughly 18,000 adults participating in the NHIS received both the American Community Survey (ACS) and Washington Group (WG) disability questions on vision, hearing, cognition, mobility, and self-care. The ACS questions use yes/no response options, while the WG questions use the responses no difficulty, some difficulty, a lot of difficulty, and cannot do at all. Of analytic interest is the extent of agreement between responses to the two sets of measures and the factors predictive of non-agreement. We also explore the characteristics of adults answering "some difficulty" to a WG question and "yes" or "no" to the ACS version. How similar/different are these two groups of adults? We conclude with suggestions for use of the respective disability measures.
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