The production of cross-nationally comparable data on disability has been one of the primary goals of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) since its inception in 2002.
The first task taken on by the WG was the development of a short set of questions on functioning that would be suitable for national censuses. The WG short set of six questions was adopted in 2006, and in the ensuing years the WG has worked to disseminate information on disability data collection and encourage countries to implement the short set on their censuses.
In recent years countries have begun to report back on the 2010 round of censuses (2006–2014) – and this paper examines recent results from our ongoing survey to collect and compare international disability data.
While far from complete in terms of compliance with WG guidelines, we have begun to collect evidence that adopting the WG approach to measuring disability in censuses can produce data that are valid and internationally comparable.