Definitions of disability, impairment, and rehabilitation in the health sciences, social sciences, law, and economics: A meta-study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The definitions of disability, impairment, and rehabilitation vary greatly across disciplines, and it is unclear whether these definitions represent the experiences of persons with disabilities or those in need of rehabilitation. Moreover, we are not aware of definitions that combine the diversity of perspectives from the health sciences, social sciences, law, and economics. This is an important issue for the future of the Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (IDRR), at Ontario Tech University, which aims to conduct transdisciplinary research and knowledge translation. We propose to conduct a meta-study (Paterson et al., 2001) in order to identify and critically engage with the definitions of disability and rehabilitation used to conduct research in the health sciences, and in the social sciences and humanities. Meta-study refers to the systematic approach to analyzing and synthesizing bodies of research to uncover what is known of a specific phenomenon, and to understand how that knowledge is contoured by epistemological and methodological conditions in order to generate new and critically inflected interpretations of existing research and knowledge (see Barnett-Page 2009). Our study is guided by our primary research question: What are the contemporary definitions of disability and rehabilitation used when conducting research in the health sciences, social sciences and the humanities, law and economics? The intent of this study is not to produce novel, summative definitions of disability, impairment, or rehabilitation; rather we endeavor to conduct transdisciplinary scholarship that identifies what is known of these terms. More specifically, we aim to locate the many ways in which these terms acquire social, historical, political-economic, and experiential meaning, and the many relations of power, governance, and care shaping and shaped by these definitions. We have selected meta-study as it is designed to “to dig below the surface of what is currently understood, to draw on the most thorough analysis possible to deconstruct the validity of the ideas that are currently in favor, and to emerge with… a better understanding, or a more socially responsible form of theorizing something” (Paterson et al., 2001, p111). Throughout the course of this review we will work with the IDRR Advisory Committee to ensure our meta-study design and outcomes align with the goal of improving the life and well-being of persons with disabilities. The Advisory Committee is a body internal to the IDRR—comprised of representatives from disability-led activist and rights advocacy groups and disability-focused rehabilitation and social services providers—that builds procedural accountability mechanisms and works with researchers to align institute aims with community needs and interests. The Advisory Committee at present includes representatives from Disability Without Poverty, the Disabled Women’s Network, the Empowerment Council, Grandview Kids, Hanover Medical School, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, the National Network for Mental Health, Physiocare Ltd., the University of Ghana Sunyani Learning Centre, and Vibrant Community Health Centre. The anticipate deliverable of this meta-study is to develop a perspective on how we use notions of disability, impairment, and rehabilitation for the purposes of engaging community members and academic partners in producing knowledge that is culturally safe, inclusive, and relevant to the work of the IDRR.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.122 | 0.223 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.025 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.017 | 0.015 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".