Disability Diagnoses Identified by the American Community Survey 6-Question Sequence

What diagnoses are identified by the American Community Survey-6 (ACS-6) used to locate people with disabilities in federal population surveys?In this cross-sectional study of 13 341 people with disabilities in the Survey of Income and Program Participation, diagnosis groupings identified by the ACS-6 varied within each question and across age groups but were consistent across race and ethnicity, sex, and education subgroups.These findings suggest research involving people with disabilities should determine subgroups appropriate to the research question rather than approach disability as a binary category and should account for disability heterogeneity alongside attempts to avoid underidentification of people with disabilities.

Corresponding Author: Ari Ne’eman, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (aneeman@hsph.harvard.edu).

Link to the article in your story

We encourage you to link out to this article in your story using the link below. It includes an access token that will give free access to the article for your readers up to one year after publication. (The link will be live after the article publishes and embargo is lifted.)

Please see the article for additional information, including full author list, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Need more information? Contact us.