THE CHALLENGENGES OF COLLECTING DISABILITY STATISITICS IN A LARGE SCALE EXERCISE, IN UGANDA by Helen Nviiri Uganda Bureau of Statistics

Introduction Censuses have remained the largest sources of Demographic & Socio economic data in Uganda (1911, 1921, 1931, 1948, 1959, 1969, 1980, 1991, 2002) Other sources include  Surveys  Administrative records

Existing Policies for Collecting Disability Data  The 1998 Statistics Act  The Draft Disability Policy

Existing Sources of Large Scale Disability Data  The 1991 Population and Housing Census  The 2002 Population and Housing Census  The 2004 Northern Uganda Baseline Survey  The 2005/6 Uganda National Household Survey  The Annual School Census - by Min of Education  The proposed 2006 Uganda DHS

Existing Sources of Administrative Disability Data  The Health Management Information system  The Pilot Disability MIS - Tororo District, Eastern Uganda

Existing Programs to address the concerns of PWD’s  The draft Disability Policy  The CBR Programme  NGO’s  Uganda society for the deaf  COMBRA  The National OVC Strategic Framework  etc

What are the challenges? Definitional Problems Definitional Problems  The definitions and concepts used to collect disability data  Lack of harmonised concepts  The reference period for the disability type may not be taken into consideration

Challenges cont…. Methodological/Coverage Issues Methodological/Coverage Issues  In censuses, do we cover all institutions, households, and hotels?  In household surveys, do we cover the institutions, refugee camps or Internally Displaced People’s camps (IDP’s)?  Are administrative records nationally representative?

Challenges cont…. Training of Field Staff Training of Field Staff  Unlike large-scale surveys, for censuses, a large number of interviewers is required (about 35,000 - the 2002 census)  Training is usually conducted at 3 levels  Trainers may lack the capacity for special needs training – team composition  At all training levels, Special Needs Trainers are required which is not the case

Challenges cont…. Type of respondent Type of respondent  In censuses and surveys, all questions target the Household Head  Important though for children especially those aged less than 10 yrs  What happens in case institutional/hotel population, especially those institutions for PWD’s – are guidelines given?

Challenges cont…. Field Testing Field Testing  No field testing is done during the field data collection. We take the responses as given by the respondent  It is important especially for young children, those aged less than 10 years  This requires specially trained personnel and maybe time consuming  It is proved to be expensive

Challenges cont…. Field Supervision Field Supervision  The large number of enumerators complicates the supervision of data collection  This increases the demand for supervisors and technical staff ( disability assessment)

Challenges cont…. Field Supervision Field Supervision  In case of HH Surveys, the problems maybe limited, if the number of teams is small and when the teams are centrally controlled

Conclusions & Recommendations  Include NGO’s CBO’s for the PWDs at all levels/stages of the Census/survey.  Decide on the levels of analysis before the data is collected. Should the hotel census questionnaire include disability questions?

THE END THANK YOU