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OVERVIEW

In Australia, the needs of people with disability are recognised in legislation under the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992. The introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) from 2013 has seen a dramatic reshaping of the provision of disability support services across the country. As a consequence, there is demand from many government and private agencies for statistical data about people with disabilities in order to provide targeted support services that effectively meet their needs. Although information on disability is available from many agencies, the ABS is the foundational source and custodian of some of Australia’s key population based surveys.

In recent years, an ageing population and a predicted increase in the overall prevalence of disability have been the cause of much political and social commentary with growing demand for disability data on a regular basis. The ABS has responded by ensuring that, apart from the large SDAC that is conducted every three years, disability specific questions (short disability module) have also been included in all recent ABS social surveys. In addition, the topic of disability (need for assistance) has been included in the past three Censuses of Population and Housing (Census).

The way in which information is collected has direct repercussions on the number of people identified as having a disability in any given survey. In the SDAC, personal interviews are conducted with every member of a household identified as having a long-term health condition that restricts their living in some way, with a large number of questions used to assess a person’s level of impairment. It is designed to estimate prevalence of disability at the national and state level.

The Short Disability Module is a short set of 16 questions which attempts to identify people with disabilities and establish the severity of those disabilities, similar to the SDAC. Of the surveys using the Module, SIH interviewed all usual residents in a household, the GSS and PSS interviewed one adult per household, and the NHS interviewed one adult and one child per household.

In the Census, information is collected via a set of four questions on the form, generally completed by one person on behalf of an entire household.

The table below provides an outline of the surveys discussed in the paper with a more detailed description of each provided in the first Appendix.

Summary of ABS surveys with a disability indicator