Looking Under the Street Lamp

Abstract

Unwarranted policy implications may emerge from the inappropriates use of measures and simplistic interpretations of trends in the employment data for people with disabilities. An example of this phenomenon is the recent misuse of traditional measures of “work disability” in media reports which argue that nondiscrimination policy has not produced increases in these employment rates. The paper cites media reports with mistaken uses of standard measures and notes that such errors flourish in a political climate receptive to reversing the emphasis on inclusion in disability policy. However, standard measures of “work disability” confound individual and situational factors. Users who do not adequately understand the nonmedical dimensions of disability unwittingly interpret trends in traditional measures as ifthe only operative factor were individuals' impairments. In this paper, I present the logic by which opposite conclusions about the effects of nondiscrimination disability policy can be inferred from existing data as a result of this confounding.