Measuring Child Disability Cross-Nationally: Development and Validation Process of the “UNICEF-WG Module on Child Functioning” (303658)

The lack of data on disability in children is widely acknowledged as is the need to develop appropriate instruments for measuring childhood disability through population surveys, which have to be tested cross-culturally in order to produce cross-national comparable data. This represents a prominent challenge for international health statistics and survey methodologists.

The UN Washington Disability Group and UNICEF have been working since 2011 to improve the measurement of child disability through population surveys, and have produced the “UNICEF-WG Module on Child Functioning”, aimed at providing cross-national comparable data. The module has been developed following a literature review, an analysis of questions already used in surveys, and a consultation process that involved survey methodologists and experts in child development and disability. Guiding principles for drafting the questions have been defined and cognitive interviews and field tests have been conducted in several countries to validate each question and the overall instrument.

This poster presents the main difficulties that can be encountered when measuring children disability through population surveys, and illustrates the main steps the development of the module has gone through, and the following validation process. Detailed information is provided especially regarding the administration of cognitive tests, training of interviewers, and improvements to the modules as a result of the tests carried out in different countries. Furthermore, information is given on the actions of capacity building and on the user guide provided to support the implementation of the module.