| A key criteria in screening for work
disability is this question from the Current Population Survey (CPS)
survey: (Do you/Does anyone in this
household) have a health problem or disability which prevents (you/them)
from working or which limits the kind or amount of work (you/they) can do?
Some doubt the validity of this question.
This question, however, is accepted as a valid one as shown by the
fact that an almost identical question is used as the cornerstone in
another major survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), also conducted by the Census Bureau.
Similar questions are asked in the National Health Interview
Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, and the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, conducted at the Survey
Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Statistical
analysis of CPS data (Gibson,
2001) demonstrates that 81% of those responding positively to this
question also responded positively to one of the other six questions
comprising the complete work disability definition.
Of the remaining 19%, the overall rate of employment is .77 – in
line with the overall Not Severely Disabled rate of .73, and well below
the Not Disabled rate. If the
question were as ambiguous as sometimes implied, one would not expect such
consistency in responses or probability of employment. |
