Performance of the Washington Group Questions in Measuring Blindness and Deafness

Abstract

The Washington Group Short Set (WGSS) questions are intended to measure the severity of disability and disability status in US federal surveys. We used data from the 2010-2018 National Health Interview Survey to examine the performance of the WGSS visual disability and hearing disability questions in capturing blindness and deafness. We found that the WGSS questions failed to capture 35.7% of blind adults and 43.7% of deaf respondents as having a severe disability, or, per their recommended cut point, as being disabled at all. Coupled with prior evidence demonstrating the poor performance of the WGSS questions in estimating the size of the overall disability population, we contend that results from this study necessitate a pause in use of the WGSS questions to measure disability in US federal surveys.