12:01:24 We'll have to figure out  what's the best.  268.  Let me go ahead and get  started so that those of you who came on time have  the benefit of the full webcast.  Just a few up  front matters, as well, we are spotlighting the  ASL interpreters today for accessibility best  practices.
12:01:37 For folks on a computer who like to  have multiple speakers alongside the presentation,  go to "view options" and you can see "side by  side" mode under view options.
12:02:12 And you can also select the gallery view.  Zoom is  changing a lot of things over time.  Some are  easier and some are less easy to adapt to.  This  website is where you can also find the compendium  report, and state-level reports that we will be  talking about.  If you did not request
12:02:31 a copy by  mail, they're supposedly going live this morning.   I'm hoping that happened.  I was teaching this  morning, so, I didn't have a chance to see whether  the website was updated.  I'm waiting for a text  to say, "Yes, of course it was."
12:02:32 >> It was.
12:02:50 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Through the speaker from on  high.  This website is where you can find the  slides as well as speaker bios.  As an attendee of  this webinar, you are a viewer.  To ask questions,  go to the Q&A box on your webinar screen and type  your questions into the box.
12:03:16 Speakers will have  the potential of seeing it.  They may potentially  answer on the fly.  But we will have a Q&A session  where we will be the moderators and I will help  review the questions and speak to them, as well.   If you have any questions, you can e-mail us at  disability.statistics.edu.
12:03:35 Or the toll free  number if you're interested in more information.   I'm going to turn it over to the moderator, which  is me.  I'm going to go back up to the front  slide.  Welcome, everybody, to the Annual  Disability Statistics Compendium.  We're going to  start calling it
12:03:51 the Annual Disability Statistics  Conference.  This was initially a morning session  on Capitol Hill where we would release the  compendium.  We've since expanded our products to  include the annual report, the supplement,  infographics, all of which we'll talk about today.   But
12:03:54 we've also expanded it to be a full-day  conference.
12:04:19 Of course, in Zoom times, we can't have the four  sessions in person.  We've decided to break it up  into four bits for an hour and 15 minute sessions.   Instead of having one session all day and having  lunch, which we've been doing for the last 20  years in various
12:04:36 forms and shapes, we're going to  break it up and do Zoom days, four days like this  one.  We're going to have four days all at  noontime.  We're going to talk about the annual  report.  We're going to do the statistics today,  all the products.  Day two, tomorrow, at noon,
12:04:52 will be our federal partners, federal data  collection agencies.  We'll talk about the latest  things that are going on, particularly related to  COVID.  On day three, we'll have the impact of  COVID and we'll have a set of speakers talking  about COVID-related data that are coming
12:05:10 out that  are starting to come out.  And understanding the  impact of COVID-19 pandemic on people with  disabilities.  And then on day four, we'll have  speakers speaking to disability and African  American population.
12:05:33 We'll hear from folks from Langston University, as  well as present the results of an infographic that  we will be publishing every year going forward.   With that, just before I before I turn it over to  Phil Beatty from NIDLER for just a few words from  him, let me tell you a bit
12:05:51 about what we're hoping  to accomplish.  From my viewpoint, statistics are  a really powerful tool.  A tool in science and  research and advocacy and policymaking.  They're  also an important source of identity.  When we  first started compiling statistics related to  disability
12:06:13 back when I was at Cornell, there was  really only, there was no annual source of  statistics.  There was something called the annual  statistical abstract of the United States.  And  the statistical abstract was this big book that  sat behind reference librarians.  It was  discontinued.
12:06:30 It was put out by the Department of  Commerce of the United States.  It had over 1,000  tables and not once did the word "disability" or  "disabled" or "handicapped."  This was a long time  ago, so there were older terms.  None of those  terms showed up.
12:06:55 There were no tables dedicated to people  disabilities and the federal and state programs  related to disability.  Out of 1,000 tables, there  was not one.  That led us to build a statistical  abstract like the compendium.  There's all kinds  of data that we put in.
12:07:15 Population data.   Program-based statistics.  Increasingly statistics  are being used in business analytics.  I'm sitting  in the middle of a business school and business  analytics is going gangbusters in terms of the use  of data.  And if we don't have measures of  disability
12:07:30 in the data sources that are being  measured or being collected, then, you know, it's  really hard to promote the lives of people with  disabilities to do research, to do policymaking  advocacy if we don't have the measures of  disability identifying the population alone,
12:07:49 let  alone aspects that are specific to people with  disabilities.  So, we'll be talking a lot about  the data sources throughout the conference and,  you know, really trying to come together as a  community to advance the world of disability  statistics.  Of course, we couldn't do
12:08:16 this  without our funding from the National Institute on  Independent Living ...NIDLER.  We're going to hear  now from Phil Beatty for a few minutes.  Take it  away, Phil.  Hello?
12:08:36 >> PHIL: Thank you, Andrew.  I was just able to  unmute myself and, I believe, to start my video.   Yes, thank you, Andrew.  And hello, everyone.   Good morning to those of you in the time zones to  the west, and good afternoon to those of you in  the Eastern Time
12:08:57 Zone.  As it has been for the  last couple of years, it's my real pleasure to  welcome everyone to this important event.  Welcome  on behalf of all of my colleagues at the  Administration for Community Living and the  National Institute on Disability Independent  Living and Rehabilitation
12:09:21 Research, or NIDILRR.  I  want to start my words of welcome by thanking the  center on disability statistics demographics and  graphics.  Each year the disability statistics RTC  systematically pulls together data from every  available source to produce this strong core of  national,
12:09:51 state, and county-level disability  information.  As a result of that solid and  systematic work each year, the compendium is a  central source of really good data about and for  people with disabilities across the country.  The  compendium really is centralized informational  infrastructure,
12:10:15 as Andrew said, for people with  disabilities, for disability advocates, service  providers, policymakers, researchers, and all  kinds of other stakeholders across the country.   So, at the same time, the rollout of the  disability statistics compendium each year is a  real opportunity
12:10:41 to discuss and prioritize  pressing topics related to disability measurement,  analysis, and reporting.  To make this point  really clearly, let's just reflect back to last  year's compendium rollout.  Exactly one year ago,  many of us, many of us were gathered for this  event
12:11:03 in a large meeting room in a hotel near the  capitol.  Many of us had flown in for the event  from places all around the country.  We were  sitting shoulder to shoulder.  We were giving each  other welcoming hugs and handshakes.  We really  had little idea of the coming national
12:11:33 public  health emergency and pandemic that we'd all soon  enter.  And the implications of the pandemic for  our lives and for our shared work.  Also, a year  ago, we didn't know the names Breonna Taylor and  George Floyd.  Their killing among so many others  that came before served
12:12:01 as catalysts for  nationwide and international demands for racial  justice and racial equity.  These have quickly and  importantly become the defining events and  experiences of our time.  And within the context  of these public health and social justice  imperatives, the RRTC has
12:12:24 put together an  excellent program of presentations and  discussions.  They've invited experts from across  the field to present and discuss disability  measurement and statistics work that pushes our  shared agenda forward.  As Andrew just described,  many of the presentations
12:12:42 will focus on COVID's  impact on people with disabilities.  Others will  focus on social inequitys among people with  disabilities by race.  And many of the  presentations will combine both of these topics in  important ways.
12:13:16 So, really thank you to everyone on the RRTC team  for pulling together this key data information as  you do each year and really thank you for rolling  it out to us through a thoughtful set of panels  and presentations and discussions.  With that, I  would like to thank our researchers
12:13:33 for being part  of this program.  On the program this week, I am  looking forward to hearing from experts from the  Census Bureau, the CDC's National Center for  Health Statistics, as well as the BBureau of Labor  Statistics and the Office of Disability Employment
12:13:52 Policy, within the Department of Labor.  We'll  also hear a presentation from an HHS colleague  from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for  Planning and Evaluation.  And of course, we  welcome and we recognize all of the excellent  statistical and analytical expertise
12:14:21 from the  University of New Hampshire and Langston  University and Mathematica.  We want you to  continue this data rollout as part of an ongoing  discussion with us, toward high-quality data, and  analytical information that we can all use to  promote an advanced,
12:14:44 strong, positive, health  employment and community living outcomes among  people with disabilities.  To the extent that the  technology allows us, please engage with the  presenters during the panels today and in the  weeks and months to come.  With, that I'm going to  turn
12:15:00 it back to you Andrew and the RRTC team to  get us started on the data presentations.  So,  really thanks again for all of the excellent work  that you're doing and for the excellent program  that's to come now and for the rest of this week.
12:15:06 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Okay, great.  Thank you,  Phil.  I appreciate it.  Phil is the research  director at the institute.
12:15:29 Phil and I were flying on a plane about 20 years  ago going to a site visit when I first met Phil.   It's great to hear from you Phil.  And thanks to  everybody at NIDILERR.  A lot of them will be the  moderators moving forward.
12:15:51 You'll see them sprinkled throughout the next four  days.  I am the moderator of the first session.   You'll hear from me quite a bit today.  Today  we're going to hear from folks around the annual  report, which I'll do, the compendium, which Sraya  will do.  Marissa and me began
12:16:16 Megan will talk about our  state reports and infographics.  And then we'll  hear from Stacy about a compilation of methods  that Mathematica has put together.  I'm going to  share my screen.  We're a little bit behind.  The  annual
12:16:21 report.  The compendium we've been doing  for a long time.  But in recent years, we've added  the annual report.
12:16:48 And the annual report is really in the most recent  years has taken on the focus of looking at time  trends over time.  So, this is work with me and  ma  Marisa Rafal.  Marisa.  Okay, let's get the page  down to go.  There we go.  So, the goals of the  annual report are to
12:17:07 ensure a presence for people  with disabilities in the context of social and  economic progress.  We're going to be tracking  year-to-year key indicators relating to the size  of the population with disabilities, the economic  wellbeing, and overall wellbeing of people with  disabilities,
12:17:26 and the contribution of the  environment of the enablement/disablement process.   We'll also be trying to make a call about did it  go up or down from last year.  Now, of course we  don't have yet data for 2020 from the primary  sources of data that are used in the compendium  and
12:17:45 the annual report, which is the American  Community Survey.  So, next year will be very,  very telling because that's when we'll have the  first kind of COVID impact for a lot of the  indicators that we can track.  On Thursday, we'll  have the panel that goes over what existing data
12:18:05 we do have on the COVID pandemic.  We'll also be  looking at statistical significance.  In order to  make the call, we have to actually look at  statistical significance to see whether our  sample, we're able to detect whether there's an  increase or a decrease.  We don't
12:18:20 have the  population statistics for the entire population of  the United States, but we have a sample, a very  big sample in the American community survey.   Sometimes we can detect changes, sometimes we  can't.  Sometimes the changes are small and  they're harder to detect.
12:18:40 Note that this is not the same as meaningfulness.   Meaningfulness is for you to decide, for people to  decide, if expert panels to decide, what is a  meaningful change.  First we have to see whether  it's due to a sample, its sampling variation or  not.  Once statistical significance
12:18:57 is determined,  the meaningfulness of it needs to be discussed in  a broader context.  We'll also focus on gaps and  the changing gaps between people with and without  disability.  We do gaps just as the straight  difference between people with and without  disabilities.  You can
12:19:10 do it in terms of ratios,  which in some aspects is better.  But from a  knowledge translation perspective, people really  want to know what's the change in things from one  year to the next.
12:19:30 Let's talk about a summary of the results from  this year.  A summary over much of 2017 to 2018,  there wasn't a great deal of change between '18  and '19.  Of course, we probably expect a lot of  change between '19 and 2020, except for a few  things.  There was an increase in the
12:19:56 size of the  U.S. population with disabilities percentage wise.   This is likely due to aging of the population.   There is a narrowing of the employment gap.  This  was actually seen if you follow the nTIDE report  with Kessler Foundation and AUCD that we do at  UNH,
12:20:11 that we've seen there was a narrowing of the  the employment gap.  We see that in the current  population survey.  We also see it in the American  Community Survey.  This is when the economy was at  full employment, we're chugging along and this was  all pre-COVID.  There was also
12:20:28 a narrowing of the  recent construction gap between people with and  without disabilities.  This is one thing we tried  to look at the relationship of the environment and  the potential for people with disabilities living  in older housing.  So, that gap between people  with and
12:20:36 without disabilities, people with  disabilities typically live in older forms of  housing.  That gap has changed.  And their road.
12:21:01 And narrowed.   And then we have something called the  disablement index.  The difficulty that they have  going outside the home on errands.  This is why  it's called the disablement index.  It's the  degree
12:21:33 to which the environment appears to be  influencing the ability to go outside alone and  run errands.  We also, many of the gaps that we  compared between, one thing to note is if you go  back to 2008, the first year we have the data,  many of these gaps have statistically changed.
12:21:51 And that's something you can go to the compendium  for.  Here is a listing.  This is a bit of a  shock.  But these are all the indicators we  currently have.  One shout out is for the National  Organization on Disability.  Sorry.  NCD.  The  National Council on Disability.  The
12:22:06 National  Council on Disability has a really great report  that's oh, probably about 12 years old now.  Yeah,  11 or 12 years.  That looked at indicators.  If we  were tracking progress, what would we track based  on available data.
12:22:25 And many of these indicators were cited in that  report by NCD as being important to track.  We're  looking to add more indicators and we're thinking  about adding indicators.  But these are the  indicators that we're looking at.  So, we're  simply looking at the percentage of
12:22:44 people with  disabilities.  Then we're looking at the gap  between living in institutions.  We don't have a  good measure that's publicly available for the  number of people living in institutions that would  go to the University of Minnesota, our colleagues  there for that information.
12:23:00 We have the high  school gap, the college gap, the employment gap,  the earnings from work gap among full-time  workers, we have the poverty gap, the health  insurance gap, the private health insurance gap,  the mass transit to work gap.  So, that's kind of  getting at people's
12:23:13 access to public  transportation whether they're living in an area  that has access to public transportation.  The age  of housing.  That recency thing that we're talking  about.
12:23:33 And then the disablement index.  Way over here on  the right side, you can see.  Oops.  You can see  the ones that increased.  There was an increase  from 13.1 to 13.2.  A decrease in the employment  gap.  And a decrease in the recency of when homes  were built and the
12:23:50 disablement index increased.   And I think we're getting short on time, so I just  want to kind of point out, you know, all these  trends.  We have charts in the annual report.   Many of you have asked for and we've mailed you  the annual report.  But it's really, you know, are  we
12:24:09 making progress?  I think that's really up to  all of us to kind of look through the data to make  that.  I don't want to be the only one.  I don't  think it really rests in any one person or any  group of people to make sense of whether we're  making progress, whether the change
12:24:28 in these  indicators indicate progress.  I will say I'm just  going to point to one thing as an economist that I  would look to.  And that is we saw a decrease in  the employment gap over the last few years when  the economy was doing well and we were in full  employment.
12:24:42 But we're still not back to, we're just not too  far away.  The gap between people with and without  disabilities is still pretty much where it was  back in 2008 the first time.
12:24:57 Also, over this time of increasing, I'm sorry,  decreasing employment gap, we didn't see the  poverty gap change.  You know, this is the  percentage point difference between people with  and without disabilities.
12:25:13 We really didn't see a change in the degree to  which there's a differential poverty gap between  people with and without disabilities.  So, I think  there was improvement, but I don't think it's been  widespread or necessarily impacted the way people  are living.
12:25:38 With that, I'm just going to show you our quick  contact information where you can get the annual  report.  Also the monthly nTIDE report, which you  can get at our web page.  With, that I'm going to  turn it over to my colleagues.  I
12:25:44 think Shreya is  next.  Right?
12:25:47 >> Yes.  Thank you, Andrew.
12:26:00 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Take it away Shreya.   Shreya is new to us this year.  Welcome.  She has  led the effort to build the compendium.  Take it  away, Shreya.
12:26:24 >> Thanks, Andrew.  Okay.  So, hello, everyone.   My name is Shraeya Paul and I'm a project director  at the Institute on Disability.  And it's my  absolute pleasure to welcome you to the 2020  Annual Release of the Disability Statistics  Compendium.
12:26:46 So, through this presentation today I'll be  describing the need and the purpose of the  compendium, introduce the compendium content and  features, how to access the compendium and  technical assistance if you may need it, and  finally describe a few users of the compendium.
12:26:51 Disability statistics, as we all know, are often  difficult to find in the United States.
12:27:08 And if found, they are often scattered across  multiple sources.  Through the compendium and the  supplement, we aim to provide a comprehensive  compilation of these statistics all in one place.   Our number-one goal is to bridge the gap between  the producers and the consumers of
12:27:33 disability  statistics and to do so in an accessible and  timely fashion.  These are some of our current  products.  The annual disability statistics  compendium and its supplement.  These two products  provide estimates on different indicators, such as  prevalence of disability
12:27:55 in the United States,  employment, earnings, housing, and occupation, and  so on.  The annual report on people with  disabilities in America as Andrew described it, it  tracks the progress of people with disabilities  using key social and economic indicators.  Next we  have the
12:28:14 state report with county-level data on  which my colleague Megan Henley will expand on.   But these reports are available if you want to  look at county-level data on prevalence,  employment, and poverty.  Currently we just have  these three topics.  And finally,
12:28:42 we have the  infographics, which are quite popular among our  products.  And this year we have two of those.   The first one on rural people with disabilities  and the second one on African American people with  disabilities.  So, this is how our products look.   This year we
12:28:47 have the HTML and PDF format for all  of these.
12:28:54 And our team works really, really hard to make all  of these comprehensive, accessible, reliable, and  timely.
12:29:11 If you want to download our products, request  copies by mail or contact us with any questions or  for technical assistance, please visit  www.disabilitycompendium.org.
12:29:39 Fun fact here.  Between September 2019 and  September 2020, our products were downloaded as  many as 8,186 times.  So, that's a big number.   For the compendium, supplement and annual report,  we pulled our data from a number of data sources.   Some of them are listed on this slide.
12:30:03 One of our  major data sources, we used the public use  microdata sample files and their five-year  estimates.  Their five-year estimates are  generally used for the state reports with  county-level data.  And it's also used by the  university of Montana who collaborate
12:30:31 with us for  the rules section of the compendium.  The next  data source is Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance  System or BRFSS.  And we use this data source to  produce estimates on risky behaviors, such as  obesity, smoking, and binge drinking.  We also  report benefits on various
12:30:51 income and benefits  obtained by people with disabilities, and these  data are obtained from Social Security  Administration or SSA or Veterans Benefits  Administration, VBA.  Another report that we  produce is on the Vocational Rehabilitation  Services received by people with disabilities
12:31:22 and  that data is obtained by rehabilitation services  administration, or the RSA website.  The  population size, prevalence, disability type.   Currently we report six major disability types:   Hearing, vision, ambulatory, cognitive, self-care,  and independent living disability.
12:31:47 We promote estimates by demographic  characteristics, that is age, race, and sex.  The  other estimates include health, health insurance,  risky behavior as I said before, employment,  earnings, poverty, SSDI and SSI, special education  services from the IDEA act and their outcomes
12:32:11 and  many more.  There have been a few changes this  year.  For example, the previous year we  calculated different estimates for different age  groups.  For example, for functionality, we used  the age group 24-64 years.  For housing, we  calculated it for age group 15 +.
12:32:35 But this year  for increasing the consistency of our reporting,  we have based most of our calculations for the age  group 18-64 years.  The second change that is  there in this year's products is that for  reporting employment and poverty to last year, we  used census bureau's
12:32:56 one-year estimate.  But we  have calculated all those estimates using the PUMS  data files this year, so you can expect that the  estimates are based on an edited sample.  Though  we do not have any brand new section in the  compendium this year, these are some of our newer
12:33:05 sections, which were introduced just last year.   These are functioning industry and occupation,  home environment, and rural.
12:33:29 Ing moving onto the next section, which is about  using the compendium, as Andrew pointed out,  statistics are a powerful tool.  And it is often  used as a decision-making tool and very often used  to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of a  policy and program.  Many times
12:34:00 doing just a quick  visualization can help us make inferences about  the current situation.  Let's see an example here.   The prevalence of disability in the United States  in 2019 for the age group 18-64.  As we can see,  Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, these  states
12:34:25 have the highest percentage of people with  disabilities.  Whereas the bigger states like New  York, California, and Texas have one of the lowest  percentage of people with disabilities.  So,  knowing the size, composition, and geographic  location of populations with disabilities,
12:34:49 it's  very important to support the allocation of public  funds to public programs.  And if we do such  visualizations for say employment, health,  poverty, we can make inferences about which states  the government needs to expand opportunities.  So,  that was one of the examples
12:35:10 of how we can use the  data that is there in our compendium and the  supplement.  Moving onto the next slide.  It's  about our ongoing efforts.  We are continuously  trying to include new sections in the compendium.   One of the sections that we are currently talking  about
12:35:28 is the mental health and substance use by  people with disabilities, even if we can only get  hold of national-level data at this moment.  We  also want to expand the state reports with  county-level data.  Currently we have just three  topics:  Prevalence, poverty, and employment,
12:35:48 but  we are looking to expand to more topics.   Infographics, again very popular products.  We  want to produce more of them.  And finally, make  the reports and the website more user friendly and  accessible going forward.  So, that was it.  If  you have any questions, particularly
12:36:10 for me,  please reach me at Shreya.paul@ UNH.edu.  And if  you need any technical assistance or have general  questions for the team, please reach us at  disability.statistics@UNH.edu.  Thank you very  much for joining us today.
12:36:21 If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer  them after the session.  I will now invite my  colleague Megan Henley who will do a presentation  on state reports with county-level data.
12:36:22 Thank you.
12:36:48 >> Great, thanks, Shreya.  I'm just going to share  some slides here.  My name is Megan Henly.  I'm  also part of the stats RTC team at the University  of New Hampshire.  I'm going to describe a little  bit about the third in the series.  The state  reports with county-level data.
12:37:09 I'm going to give a brief overview to let you know  what to find in these reports and I'll show a  couple of graphics to show how they may be of use.   Now all of these data products are here to fill a  need and many have been made because of requests  in the past or anticipating
12:37:29 what will be needed  based on conversations with data users.  If you  want to gather information about the size, but we  have different products for different needs, as  Shreya was describing.  The first two  presentations we just had the compendium and  supplement.
12:37:36 And that's showing the most recent  figures for what's happening at the national level  and at the state level.  And earlier, Andrew  highlighted the annual report.
12:37:55 And that's great for showing trends over time at  the national level.  So, what's changing and  what's improving.  But, you know, if you are  interested in local level issues.  If you're doing  issues specific to a state and you want to know  about county-level variation
12:38:12 or what's local to  your community, then those national level numbers  may not be particularly useful to you, because  keeping in mind that's a midpoint.  And if your  particular local area isn't maybe one of the tails  of that distribution, it may not give you the best  picture of
12:38:25 what's happening.  That's really the  goal of what the state reports are doing.  These  are some of the same tables that you'll find in  the compendium, but they have data reproduced for  every county and every state.  So, the most recent  reports that we have available use data
12:38:56 from the  American Community Survey five-year estimates.   The 2019 data were just released late last year  and so these reports were just produced in the  last several weeks.  There is one on employment of  disability status and one by poverty for  disability status.  Again,
12:38:59 these topics, they're  in response to data users' needs.
12:39:16 And we're hoping to expand upon these and provide  additional reports in future years.  So, if you  have a particular topic, especially one that you  see in the compendium, some of them we may not be  able to have state-level data just based on the  availability of the reporting,
12:39:35 but many of them we  can do.  So, we'd love to hear what's of use to  you in your local community.  If it's not  something we'll produce for next year, it's  definitely something we can respond to and give  you that data for the area of interest to you.   Just be in touch with us.
12:39:50 So, what you can expect  to find in these reports, you'll find the summary  tables just as you'll see in the compendium  report.  But we also have some heat maps, which  are useful.  I have a couple of examples that I  just threw up here just to provide some context so  you can
12:40:08 think about how to view and interpret  these.  So, this first example here is showing  from the disability prevalence report, this is a  heat map for the state of Maryland.  And it's  showing the percentage of people with disabilities  by county.  The lightest color blues have
12:40:25 the  lowest prevalence, in this case it's under 9%.   And the darkest blues have the highest percentage,  and that's 15.7% or higher when you're looking at  Maryland.  When you see a map like this, you can  quickly understand that for the most part we see  low rates of disability
12:40:44 prevalence throughout the  state, but then two counties at opposite ends of  the state stand out as having higher prevalence.   One is in the upper northwest, Allegheny County,  and along the eastern shore, Dorchester County.   And then disability prevalence, instead of the  percentage,
12:41:02 we look at the count, we see quite a  different picture.  This is looking at number of  people instead of a percentage.  You see the  counties with the largest number of people with  disabilities are concentrated around the District  of Columbia and Baltimore areas that are
12:41:16 more  densely populated, as well.  I just noted we have  a live question that asks about how we can use  results, particularly the state-level reports to  talk to local-level legislators to provide better  opportunities for people with disabilities was the  question.  So, I mean
12:41:32 really, you know, this is  just looking at disability prevalence.  I also  have data on disability employment and poverty.   If you're looking to kind of think about  disparities, you might want to look at the  percentages.  Like, and this is where you're
12:41:50 going  to be highlight and look at the differences.  If  you're looking at where you want to make the  greatest impact where the largest number of people  are, you may want to look at these counts, the  heat maps with the counts and focus in on those.   So, we would love to have
12:42:07 a bigger conversation  with anybody who has specific requests about how  to tailor the data to address a need.  Sometimes  having these reports available to you are useful  as starting points to see just what data is  available.  But if you're not sure, you know, what  you need, we're
12:42:24 always open to kind of filling  that data need because our goal is to provide the  information to answer those questions.  So, I just  wanted to provide these as kind of a brief  overview of what you'd expect.  We would really  love your feedback if you are using these about
12:42:42 how they've been in use.  So, we'd love to be in  contact with you about that.  But in the meantime,  I'll turn it over to my colleague, Marisa Rafal  who would like to highlight a different  data  product.
12:43:01 >> Thank you very much.  I'm Marisa and I'm  excited to present the numbers for this year's  rural infographic.  If you could advance the  slide.  Thank you.  Just as kind of a background,  the statistics and demographics RRTC team will  make a new infographic each year and will
12:43:18 update  the previous ones.  This shows the updated numbers  for the first one in this series, which was U.S.  Rural Disability Statistics.  On Friday Tnew one  will be released, which is Disability Infographic:   Social Inequities Experienced by African  Americans.
12:43:36 On the screen, this shows the updated numbers for  the 2014-2018 ACS 5-year data.  That's where this  came from.  Last year it went up to 2017.  And on  the left is just kind of a screen shot of the  infographic, which if you requested it you might  have received by mail or it
12:44:02 might be on its way to  you.  Just as some definitions before we jump in,  urban counties are referred to as metropolitan and  those have an urban core of 50,000 or more people  while rural counties are micropolitan.  And  noncore have no urban core with more than 10,000
12:44:23 people.  In more rural places, disparities widen.   When looking at prevalence, what we found is that  disability prevalence goes up the more rural a  place becomes.  So, metropolitan or urban counties  had a 12% disability prevalence rate, going up to  15.8% in micropolitan
12:44:44 counties and then going up  17.9% in noncore counties or those most rural  counties.  Also with poverty rate, 1 in 4 p people  with disabilities in the most rural places  experience poverty.  This is a fraction
12:45:11 of an  infographic, if you want more concrete, they're in  the disability section of the compendium.   And  finally, with employment, we found that the  employment rate for people with disabilities ages  18-64 went down as places became more rural.  So,  there was
12:45:38 an employment rate for people with  disabilities 18-64 of 36.8% in metropolitan  counties, going down to 33.1% in micropolitan  counties, and 30.7% in those noncore, most rural  counties.  That's a broad overview.  We would like  to give a huge thank you to our collaborators
12:46:16 at  the University of Montana RTC:  Rural.  If you  have any questions, reach out to  Disability.statistics@ UNH.edu.  Or you can e-mail  me directly or Megan.  To that, I will pass the  virtual mic to Stacy Feldman from Mathematica.
12:46:35 >> Thank you.  I'm just going to share my screen.   Great.  Well, thank you for providing me with the  opportunity to present the compendium of  disability data collection methods.  Before I  begin, I'd like to thank NIDDILRR for funding this  project, and I'm like to acknowledge
12:46:52 the  co-authors, Jason and William.  It's critical for  organizations involved in quantitative and  qualitative data collection efforts to consider  the extent to which their methods create barriers  to participation for people with disabilities.   However, there are
12:47:05 few available resource to  address this problem.  To fill this knowledge gap,    Mathematica created the compendium of disability  data method.
12:47:09 >> Stacy, I'm going to pause you real quick.   We're not seeing your screen right now.
12:47:11 >> Oh, I'm so sorry.
12:47:18 >> No worries.
12:47:19 >> How about now?
12:47:22 >> Perfect.  Thank you.
12:47:23 >> Sorry about that.  Oh gosh.
12:48:10 >> It happens.  Sorry, one second.  So, the  compendium is an accessible source of information  associatessed with collecting data from or about  people with disabilities.  It includes 441 indexed  references published from 2012 to 2020 that  summarized papers and presentations that
12:48:26 discussed  challenges and best practices for collecting data  from people with disabilities.  And systematic  reviews of various screening and measurement  tools.  We view the compendium as a living  document.  We continue to gather references  throughout the year.  We publish
12:48:50 an updated of the  document each year to coincide with the release of  the annual disability statistics compendium.  Here  are other broad subject areas that the compendium  covers.  Each of these subject areas are further  broken down by subtopics.  For example, under  Disability/impairment
12:49:07 type, sub topics include  aging and later life disabilities, developmental,  intellectual, and cognitive impairments, as well  as sensory, communication, physical, and  psychological impairments.  Data collection  subtopics include adaptive technologies, proxies,  inclusive
12:49:27 strategies, and participatory action  research, interviewing techniques, and qualitative  methods.  The special population subtopics are  youth a with disabilities and veterans.  We  recently added reference to three ongoing national  surveys.  American Community survey,
12:49:51 Current  Population Survey, and National Health Survey.   They're ordered alphabetically and most contain a  URL.  We place the references in all applicable  categories, therefore many of them are indexed  under more than one subject.
12:50:12 To create the compendium, we conduct a literature  search each year on the topics that I just  described.  We obtain articles from a host of  online journal sources, conference presentations,  and working papers and dissertations.  After  completing the literature search, we apply
12:50:30 eligibility criteria to further specify which  references we should include in the compendium.   We include resources that discuss, examine, or  test methods used to collect data from people with  disabilities.  We do not include references or  articles that primarily focus on analyses
12:50:55 or  findings from survey data.  We consider  publications and presentations from all over the  world.  We screen out any articles for which the  full text is not available or accessible or  published in a language other than English.  And  due to time and resource constraints,
12:51:32 oops, sorry.   Sorry, due to time and resource constraints, we do  not evaluate the methodological quality of the  references.  We added 110 new references.  We  wanted to give you a flavor of some of the  research questions that are addressed in the  articles and references
12:51:48 we added to this year's  compendium.  There's a lot of interesting  material.  For example, focusing on the first  bullet, Elizabeth and colleagues provide  recommendations about conducting in-depth  interviews with people with dementia.
12:52:06 Topics discussed include interview guide  preparation, recruitment, obtaining consent and  assent, conducting effective interviews, analysis  and interpretation of data, and effective  communication of research findings.
12:52:29 In particular, they noted that providing  strategies to support interviewees with the  symptoms of data, such as repetition and  rephrasing of questions, developing single-faceted  questions, and the use of visual prompts are key  to developing interview guides.  And
12:52:51 here are a  few more research questions focusing on the first  bullet, my Mathematica colleague Jesse Chandler  tested the feasibility of collecting web survey  data from a sample of VR applicants, inviting  non-respondents to complete a telephone interview.   People were
12:53:15 provided a mobile device.  Respondents  who elected to complete the survey online versus  by telephone differed in level of education and VR  experience.  These findings suggest that for  disability studies, web surveys are an important  supplement to, but not a replacement
12:53:40 for  traditional data collection efforts.  To  access  the compendium, it will appear on the disability  compendium website after this event and it is  currently available on the Mathematica website at  this link.  For more information, please contact  my co-author
12:54:03 Jason Markesich or myself.  And thank  you to University of New Hampshire, NIDILRR ACL,  and the Department of Health and Human Services.   Thank you.
12:54:22 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Thank you, Stacie.  Let's  get back up and running.  We've got a lot of Q&A.   Thank you for being on time.  I'm sad to say I  haven't been listening to my colleagues, but I  have been responding to things on Q&A.  If you've  never been to the disability
12:54:39 statistics compendium  event live, for many years we've tried to expand  and have as much Q&A as possible, which is why  we're going over an hour today and going onto the  next 15 minutes.  We've got lots of people asking  questions.  We will stay on afterwards
12:54:54 to answer  questions after we close down.  Let me share my  screen and then I'm going to start going through  some of the questions.  Some of the questions  we've already answered.  If you're interested,  there's a lot of very interesting questions that  have been asked and answered.
12:55:25 Let me first share  my screen so that we get the information up there.   Doo, doo, doo.  Oh, I did it again!  When you go  too far it stops sharing.  I'm just going to leave  it on that view.  All right.  So, thank you to all  the presenters.  You can find the compendium at  disabilitycompendium.org.
12:55:56 You can also find  things on researchondisability.org and thank you  to NIDILRR.  Let's go ahead and start the Q&A  section.  I think you'll actually see a black box.
12:56:04 >> I think we were going to have people turn on  their cameras and stop screen share for the Q&A.
12:56:21 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: That's good.  Now you can  see all of us.  I'm going to go through a couple  of the ones that we already asked and answered.  A  couple of people raised the issue around needing  more specificity.  So, looking at different age  breakdowns, race, gender
12:56:38 , ethnicity.  Some of  those you can find in the compendium supplement.   The compendium supplement was designed to put out  more breakdowns because people were asking for  them.
12:56:55 We also as I believe Megan mentioned, we have the  ability, much of this data we have at our  fingertips and can reestimate using different age  breakdowns or race, gender, where certainly if  people are interested and really need a very  specific
12:57:22 kind of information, we're happy to do  that.  Also for the U.S. territories and the  Virgin Islands, the commonwealths, the American  Voice Survey has some of that.  Puerto Rico is  well represented in the data sources.  Some of the  other territories, not so much.  Give
12:57:48 us a call.   We may be able to ...help you out and find what  you need.  The idea of onset.  So, it was raised  that a lot of these are working age, and we don't  necessarily know whether people acquired it in  later ages.
12:58:07 Particularly with employment.  The employment of  people who perhaps acquired the disability during  an occupational incident, right?  An accident, an  on-the-job accident may be very different from  people who had a disability since birth  and went  through the
12:58:22 education system and into the labor  market already having their disability.   Unfortunately, a lot of the disability data  sources do not have, almost all of them are pretty  limited in their ability to look at disability  onset.
12:58:51 Someone raised the issue of rare conditions.  So,  low-incidence disabilities, low-prevalence  disabilities, rare diseases.  You know, the  compendium and a lot of the work we've always  focused on things that are annually updated and  available at state levels.  And that's where
12:59:08 low  incidence, rare conditions don't fit well within  our current kind of mindset.  But certainly, we  could add them on the national level and then  update them whenever they're updated.  I mean  that's the issue.  They are rare conditions.  They  many times are not asked about
12:59:26 in the data in the  surveys and information we have.  So, I think that  that would be something Shreya that we could look  at next year.  We did provide tables for the  survey of income and program participation.  But  when that didn't get updated after several years,  we dropped
12:59:50 it.  That was annual data that got more  detailed.  Not necessarily rare diseases, but more  detailed functional limitations and conditions.   There was a question, a good one, on the provision  of standard errors, of confidence intervals,  margins of error.  We do impose a sample
13:00:13 size  restriction that kind of a minimum sample size.   But that sometimes still isn't enough and you  could get big jumps particularly for small areas  like say Wyoming or Rhode Island.  Small areas.   You could get big jumps from year to year.  That's  simply due to sample yearuation.
13:00:15 variation.
13:00:36 And from an advocacy perspective, that could lead  you down a road that's not appropriate.  We've had  this issue years and years ago.  The census had  this issue not with anything that we produced, but  there was an issue where the City of Chicago went  from like, you know, a million
13:00:59 people with  disabilities to half that.  I forget exactly the  number.  And people were really concerned about  that.  And that was an issue.  So, we continue to  struggle and figure out way to disseminate  confidence intervals.  Now with the ability to  produce things online faster,
13:01:12 that's certainly  something that we'll reconsider our strategy  around that.  Because, you know, our sample size  restrictions deficient or not.
13:01:29 A lot of folks have asked about data on children.   So, when I used to kind of take lots of calls and  requests for disability data, there were three  areas.  There was location, so, state-specific.   People were really interested in state-specific.
13:01:42 That's one of the reasons why the compendium is  focused on states so much.  There was disability  specific.  And then there was data on children.   For many years, those were the big kind of  requests that come in.
13:02:02 Data on children is a really interesting one.   There's several people who have asked about data  on children.  And I'd have to say that the  compendium is definitely, and it's partly due to  data availability and partly due to looking at a  lot of economic indicators.
13:02:20 But we could do child poverty.  You know, how many  children with disabilities live in poverty.  We  could add more child-based statistics.  We do have  the IDEA data that is available, the IDEA meaning  special education data.
13:02:37 We have some of that data in the compendium.  But  some of the data sources that collect information  on the population with disabilities are not great  at collecting information for children with  disabilities.
13:02:55 It's hard to know how families are responding to  some of these questions when they're answering  these questions.  But again, if you're interested  in more specifics, we can do technical assistance  and provide some of these stats based on children.   Developmental disabilities.
13:03:18 So, this is a big  issue.  And I think was it last year?  Or the year  before?  We focused our whole conference on  statistics related to developmental disabilities,  people with developmental disabilities.  There is  a big effort at the, oh, nudge, nudge, somebody  just nudged
13:03:43 me.  Some questions are to other  panelists.  Okay, I'm going to stop talking.  I'll  finish my question.  If one of the other panelists  wants to chime in, let me know.  So, get ready  Shreya, Megan, Stacie, Marisa, and maybe even  Phil.  Let me finish up that one question.
13:04:04 A  developmental disability.  At the Administration  on Community Living, and the Administration on  Development al Disability, there is a big effort  to look at data collection around developmental  disability.  It's a very specific question very  often that
13:04:30 people have in mind.  The cognitive  difficulty question.  Those kinds of questions are  not necessarily focused on people with  developmental disability.  And so it's a major  issue.  Please contact us if you're interested in  learning more.  We can send you links to some
13:04:36 of  the reports that were produced by ACL.  Okay, I'm  going to turn it over.  Anybody else want to  answer a couple questions that are live?
13:05:05 >> Yeah.  I would like to answer a question by  Hernissa.  She says looking at the person age  rates could be risky because it does not  necessarily account for the larger number of  people with disabilities in larger states like New  York and California.  When we calculate the
13:05:31 percentage, our denominator is always people with  disabilities in that state.  So, if we are saying  that there are 25% people with disabilities  employed in the state of California, we mean that  25% out of the entire people with disabilities in  California.  So, yeah.  I think
13:05:34 does that answer  your question?
13:05:50 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Yeah, I think that's right.   We stay away from reporting just sheer numbers.   We provide the sheer numbers in the compendium,  but when we start doing any kind of analysis, it's  usually the percentage.  And then we also look at  the difference between with
13:06:11 and without  disability, specifically with employment,  comparing some states who have better employment  outcomes may be unfair.  So, we look at and  compare people with and without disabilities.   Boy, a ton of questions.  We have 27 open  questions.  Anybody
13:06:15 else want to take a question?   I'm tired of talking.
13:06:36 >> This is Megan.  I can pop in here.  Let me see  if I can find it again.  There was a great  question here asking about how we plan to  incorporate data from the dicennial census.   That's a great question.  I don't know if anybody  recalls filling out their census form
13:06:55 about a year  ago almost.  There were actually no questions on  disability in the dicennial form this year.  We've  been using data from the American Community  Survey.  It's a sample survey.  So, it's  unfortunate that it does not actually count every  single person,
13:07:14 but it used representative sampling  so we could capture good estimates for many  different geographies and it does capture  disability.  It's more current.  It's unfortunate  we won't have the full population estimates, but  we have current data and it will be updated every  year,
13:07:20 which is a benefit of that.  So, I just saw  that question and I thought I'd pop on there.
13:07:50 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Yeah.  I just saw a  question about data related to depression.   Certainly psychiatric disabilities are not very  well represented in a lot of the data products, a  lot of the surveys that we're using.  It's been  improving over the years.  The survey of
13:08:07 income  and program participation, the SIP, is probably  the best most comprehensive national one, although  it's not updated every year.  It's updated roughly  every four years.  And so again, a lot of these  are challenging.  That same person asked, you  know, are there questions
13:08:24 that are better than  others?  We have a whole set of research projects  that look at the way which disability-related  questions are asked in surveys.  And some are  better than others.  There's a fairly standard  six-question sequence that's asked in most federal  data collection
13:08:43 systems.  There's also the  Washington Group set of questions, which comes out  of the United Nations that is quite different.  It  addresses a lot of the same aspects of a person's  life, you know, vision and hearing.  But it allows  Census Bureau and many other things say yes,
13:08:59 no,  do you have something or do you not?  The  Washington Group has a scale that you can respond  to so that it's not just strictly yes/no.  All  right, anybody else want to take a question?
13:09:19 >> This was kind of related.  I saw it in the Q&A.   Any thought of using a different definition of  rural.  The OMB may under count the population.   The federal office of health policy may have a  more useful definition for future analyses.  I  imagine we would have
13:09:34 to talk it over with  collaborators, but it is something we update every  year.  It's something we could consider.  It's  tangentially related because the way you  count   things and estimate them are going to affect your  product.  Definitely
13:09:45 something to consider.  And  you'll see on Friday we pulled from several  different sources for our infographics.  They're  definitely a compilation and there is flexibility  there.
13:10:00 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Yeah.  One that popped up.   Many times you can look at the answers.  There's  some really fascinating questions we've been  answering just by typing.  Many people have talked  about rural statistics.  We have the rural section  that we co-sponsor with
13:10:25 the RTC at the University  of Montana.  They have a lot of great products and  I would point folks interested in rural-related  transportation-related statistics, go speak to our  colleagues at the RTC at the University of  Montana.  It's the Rural RTC.  If you typed in  "Disability
13:10:36 research Montana rural" you'd find  them.  Google is probably the best way to go.  If  we can't send you.  Or contact us and we'll send  you their contact information.
13:10:44 >> And Andrew, I'll just pop in, just as Andrew  noted in the question and answer, he also  commented with contact information for RTC Rural.
13:10:56 So, if anybody has that handy, it's also just  RTCrural@mso.umt.edu.  And there's a phone number  there, as well.
13:10:57 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Yeah.
13:11:00 >> Lots of great questions.
13:11:14 And I wanted to offer a quick comment on recent  questions.  Somebody looking for data on higher  education did not provide their name.  But please,  I would love to be in contact with you if you have  specific questions.  There is data in the  compendium on educational attainment,
13:11:28 but nothing  on current post-secondary enrollment.  But that's  something that we are talking about right now and  we are looking at.  So, we do have some data on  that that we can provide if you just let me know  specifically what you're interested in.
13:11:52 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Yeah.  Kate just put it in,  in the chat, I think.  Or somewhere.  Some  information about costs.  Annette, what do you  think Annette?  Some self-serving questions.  Cost  of disability, disability-related costs.  We don't  really have a good annual source
13:12:12 of that.   Actually, the medical expenditure panel survey  would probably be the best.  I'd love to see the  consumer expenditure survey add the six questions.   They should be.  But that's the primary household  expenditure survey in the United States.
13:12:31 I'm not sure how they've gotten away with not  complying with the ACA mandate to have, perhaps  because it's not a health survey primarily.  But  the consumer expenditure survey would be that.   Some folks have said have we used data from  various foundations such as the Se ree
13:12:54 United Cerebral  Palsy Foundation.  We typically steer clear of  that.  Only because we, you know, it has to be  updated, it has to be publicly available.  The  developmental disability administration, if  there's data that people think, if it's available,  you know, on
13:13:17 an annual basis, we'd love to do  that.  The 14C, someone asked about the  employment.  14C, I just saw some really cool  data.  It's kind of hodgepodge data on the  requests for 14C waivers.  It could be done by  state.  It's this kind of cheesecloth Excel
13:13:39 file  that the Department of Labor puts out.  I'm not  sure how frequently it's updated and that would be  really cool to, at least by the time we get into  the compendium, 14C might be gone.  14C is the  minimum wage exemption for people working in  certain disability-related employment
13:13:42 centers.   Anybody else want to take a question?
13:14:07 >> I would like to take a question by Joseph  Barry.  He wants to know about the  intersectionality of the data that we have in  compendium and the supplement.  So, currently, we  do have race, gender, age by disability type.  For  example, we do report on race by
13:14:26 disability type.   White Hispanic population with hearing disability  or cognitive disability and so on.  But this space  can be explored more.  And that is one of the  notes that I would make for next year.
13:14:46 >> ANDREW HOUTENVILLE: Mm-hmm.  Mm-hmm.  Great.   We are coming right up at 1:15.  I am going to  close.  We will stay onto try to answer some of  these live.  So, whoever is running the show, you  can stop recording, but leave it open so that we  can answer some of these questions
13:15:06 that are still  going.  And people can feel free to stay onto look  at whether their questions are answered or not.   With that, I'm going to thank all our speakers.   I'm going to thank Phil Beatty from NIDILRR.  And  I want to remind everybody that we have our  session tomorrow.
13:15:26 Yeah, tomorrow, at noontime  Eastern.  We're going to be hearing from our  federal data collection partners.  And there's  been a lot going on with data collection and  adjusting to COVID life.  Because the Census  Bureau, when it sends people out or calls people,  has to address the
13:15:48 changing environment that COVID  has really kind of impacted us all.  With that,  I'm going to say good-bye and we're going to stop  recording.  Thank you all.  There's also an  evaluation survey.  I keep forgetting to  plug the  evaluation
13:16:13 survey.  You would get it on the way  out.  Disabilitycompendium.org.  And that's where  you can provide input on things that we should  possibly include in the future as we expand the  compendium and all our other products.  All right,  thank you very much, everybody!  Hopefully