1. Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers

2. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary The temporarily able-bodied in this presentations title is a disability community term for persons without disabilities at present, indicating that anyone can incur a disability in an instant, and that each of us will have a disability, if we live long enough (age being the great leveler).

3. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Introductory Commentary: Abt Associates is an employee-owned international social research firm headquartered in Cambridge, MA. My name is Ray Glazier; as you can see, I am a wheelchair user with speech impairment, head of Abts Center for the Advancement of Rehabilitation & Disability Services.

4. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Presentation prepared for: Best Practices for Surveying People with Disabilities Inter-Agency Committee on Disability Research Washington, D.C. 20 April 2004 Raymond E. Glazier, Ph.D. Abt Associates Inc.

5. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: The theme of this conference is of great importance in conducting disability research, and perhaps even more importantly for the full inclusion and appropriate representation of persons with divers disabilities in general population surveys like the decennial U.S. Census.

6. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: This presentation is a sampler of the Interviewer Training Module on Disability that I have developed for training Abt interviewers to conduct effective in- person interviews with persons with various disabilities in the field. I argue for inclusion of this module in each and every project-specific interviewer training programme. Today you will be the interviewer trainees.

7. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers The Two-Fold Challenge: Interviewer trainees are typically young, commonly with little experience of disability of any kind. They need to learn what to expect, in terms of different disabilities they may encounter in the field. At the same time as training raises their disability awareness, it needs to portray disability as simply one aspect of the human condition and provide trainees with coping strategies for difficult situations that will reassure them and give them confidence.

8. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: Although 1 in 5 Americans has some sort of disability and 1 in 3 households has a disabled member, the majority of Americans do not have immediate personal experience with a disability. Furthermore, having experience with one disability does not necessarily confer sensitivity to or knowledge about other disabilities.

9. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Interviewer Training Module Components: Interview Guidelines handout, a take-away with information and specific pointers Briefing and Q&A by a professional with disability Role-play exercise with custom-tailored Chance Cards of problem interview situations Peer review and group discussion, best practice tips

10. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: Each trainee receives a take-away copy of Interviewer Guidelines with sections on disability etiquette, interview considerations for each different category of disability, and practical tips for each disability category. The contents are reviewed in a training session led by a professional researcher (RG) with disabilities, with free-ranging Q&As.

11. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Sample Guidelines Topics & Content: Our culture's emphasis on youth, good looks, athleticism, etc. makes it seem that disabilities are "unusual" or "abnormal. This notion can influence an interviewer to treat the respondent as an object of pity or even revulsion, as less than fully competent. It is vitally important to always think of the respondent firstly as a person, and only secondarily as a person with a disability (or disabilities). Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers

12. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers There are a wide range of disabilities that can occur across the life span: Physical disabilities like mobility impairments often come to mind first, but disfigurement is also a disability. Mental health disabilities are less visible, but no less disabling, often intermittent and episodic. Mental retardation occurs with different levels of severity. Blindness of deafness may be complete or incomplete. Chronic illness can be very debilitating, as with chronic pain.

13. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 expanded the concept of disability to include persons with a history of disability or thought of by others as disabled. Persons with a history of psychiatric treatment. Persons in substance abuse recovery (but not active) Protection is included for family members of PwDs. Excluded are persons with, for example, pyromania or pedophilia, who might injure themselves or others. Supreme Court decisions have limited protections.

14. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Examples of pointers: When interviewing a wheelchair user, position yourself at his/her eye level. For a person with limited vision, find a well-lit area. Dont obscure your mouth movements.

15. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: In this admittedly staged interview session, my friend has positioned himself properly for eye level contact in a well-lit area. However, both of us, by virtue of our beards, are guilty of violating the visibility of mouth movements principle that would facilitate communication with a lip-reading respondent with a hearing limitation.

16. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers The training atmosphere should be relaxed (maybe not this relaxed), one in which trainees can feel free to ask questions about disability that they have always wanted to ask (but were too self- conscious to verbalize). There needs to be a cross-disability scope in the information provided.

17. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: In a relaxed, informal training setting like this small group, trainees can feel free to ask about things theyve always wanted to know. E.g., I was once asked if all quadriplegics have body odor. The person was generalizing from an experience with a quadriplegic boss who didnt shower often enough. Do Deaf parents have Deaf offspring? (Sometimes, not always.)

18. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Each trainee draws a random Chance Card that presents a problem interview situation involving a respondent with a disability. The deck of cards includes situations of all major disability types: mobility, sensory, cognitive, affective.

19. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: The Chance cards well use today are taken from a training for persons doing in-home interviews with disabled public housing residents about their housing project size preferences, from a Congressionally mandated study Abt conducted recently for HUD. All materials in the training module are custom tailored to each survey project.

20. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers B – You are interviewing Ben, a 25-year-old man with moderate mental retardation. He is very shy and keeps looking to his father Harry, who is present to help with the interview. When you get to What is the most important thing to you about where you live? Harry says, without even looking to his son for a cue, The most important thing for Ben is living near enough to us that his mother and I can look after him. How can you find out what Ben thinks? C – You are interviewing Betty, a developmentally disabled young woman who uses a wheelchair. She has told her personal assistant (PA) that he can go out for a smoke, so you can conduct the interview in private in her quarters. Things are going well despite Bettys moderate speech impairment, when suddenly her arms and legs begin to spasm in what appears to be a seizure, and her cup of coffee spills. What should you do?

21. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: While you do not want to come between father and son, the interviewer should probe for Bens real feelings. What may be important for him might be friends (maybe a girlfriend) in the project where he lives. Or maybe he likes the fact that there is a good pizza parlor next door. Commentary: The important thing is to call the P.A. back into the room right away; he knows how to handle this. An all-to-human reaction is to worry about the spilled coffee. Do not try to force something in her mouth to prevent her swallowing her tongue.

22. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers G – The project manager forewarned you about Sallys paranoia, but assured you that she is an intelligent, well educated person with two Ivy League degrees. Sally is quite pleasant, offering you a cup of coffee when you come into her home. She tells you that shed prefer not to live with persons with disabilities, but has no choice about that just now because of her financial circumstances. But at this point she wants to discontinue the interview, saying, I just know the others are listening through the TV. Thats why I never talk about private things in this room. What do you do?

23. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Commentary: The important thing in this interview situation is not to challenge this respondents reality, but to seek common ground that is not threatening to her. A good reaction would be, Well, then maybe youd be more comfortable if we talk in another room. Where can we go to sit down and talk privately?

24. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers Abt Associates Inc. has a full-service Survey Research Group that performs many national surveys: direct mail, in-person interviews, telephone interviews (including CATI and RDD survey capabilities), and focus groups. Abt has proven strategies for maximizing survey participation of respondents with disabilities. Dr. Glazier, in addition to having developed this interviewer training program, has trained many Abt interviewers; he has also directed a number of surveys of persons with disabilities. For more information, E- mail him: ray_glazier@abtassoc.com

25. Visit us on the Web at www.AbtAssociates.com Training Temporarily Able-Bodied Interviewers www.AbtAssociates.com