The Disability Data Measures Project seeks to improve disability data collection, following the Disability Royal Commission’s call for consistency across surveys and services. Findings suggest that a strong conceptual framework and minimal question set can produce detailed, nationally consistent data. Further consultation, refinement and testing are needed for future implementation.

Key findings

• It’s better if organisations that collect data about disability use the same questions and concepts to measure disability.
• It’s better to ask a few questions instead of just one to find out if someone has a disability. For example, a single question to find out if someone has a disability is easy to answer but the response may not give all the information needed.
• There is more work to do about understanding how asking a single question affects data when compared to asking a few questions.