1

Terence M. McMenamin

mcmenamin.terence@bls.gov

Terence M. McMenamin is an economist in the 

Office of Employment and Unemployment 

Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Steven F. Hipple

hipple.steve@bls.gov

Steven F. Hipple is an economist in the Office of 

Employment and Unemployment Statistics, U.S. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The development of questions on disability for the 

Current Population Survey

After a decade of development, questions aimed at 

identifying people with disabilities were added to the 

Current Population Survey.

In June 2008, six questions designed to identify people with 

disabilities were added to the Current Population Survey 

(CPS). In February 2009, monthly labor force estimates of 

people with disabilities were released to the public via a 

website that was updated each month with the newest data. 

One year later, a table with data on the labor force status of 

people with disabilities was added to the monthly 

Employment Situation news release.1

The release of the first CPS data on people with disabilities 

was preceded by a 10-year development period that began 

in the late 1990s. In the early stages of the process, and in 

accordance with President Clinton’s Executive Order 

13078,2 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), along with 

several other federal agencies, identified the goal of placing 

a small set of questions within the CPS to measure the 

employment status of people with disabilities as a means of 

tracking their employment progress after the adoption of the 

Executive order. Extensive research efforts in support of 

this goal resulted in the identification of a set of seven 

questions, which were then tested in the February 2006 

CPS. Analysis of the February 2006 CPS data revealed that 

the additional questions did not adversely affect the response rates for the survey, but the questions did function in 

a different way than was anticipated on the basis of previous testing. As a result of these unanticipated 

consequences, in lieu of further testing of the same questions, the decision was made to adopt a set of questions 

that had been developed for use in the American Community Survey (ACS).3

The purpose of this article is to document the process by which BLS and other federal agencies developed 

questions to identify the disability population in the CPS.

April 2014
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

2

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

Formation of interagency working group

In early 1998, Executive Order 13078 established the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with 

Disabilities, an overarching organization that provided an operating base for several committees and workgroups 

with mandates specified in the order. The Executive order directed BLS to work with several other federal agencies 

to develop a measure of the employment rate of people with disabilities that was to be published on as frequent a 

basis as possible. Pursuant to the mandate, the task force established the Employment Rate Measurement 

Methodology (ERMM) Work Group, to include members from 17 federal agencies. The effort received financial 

support primarily from the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) and the National 

Institute on Disability and Rehabilitative Research (NIDRR).

The task of developing questions to identify the disability population was challenging because there is 

considerable disagreement on how to define disability. In fact, there are numerous definitions of the term that are 

used throughout the federal government. The definition of disability given in Executive Order 13078 states, “An 

adult with a disability is a person with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits at least one major 

life activity.” This definition views disability as a function of the interaction between an individual with an impairment 

and his or her environment.

The CPS, a monthly survey of about 60,000 households that is conducted by the Census Bureau for BLS, collects 

information on labor force status by a variety of demographic characteristics. The CPS was chosen as the vehicle 

for including the disability questions for two main reasons. First, because the CPS is a monthly survey, it would 

satisfy the requirement in the Executive order to present the data on disability in a timely fashion. Second, because 

the CPS is already the official source of employment and unemployment data for various demographic groups, it 

was a logical decision that data on individuals with disabilities be included within its scope.

The main purpose of the CPS is to ascertain the labor force status of the U.S. population. In addition, the CPS 

collects a wide range of demographic and labor force information, and answering all of its questions places a time 

burden on respondents, who are volunteer participants. Thus, any new question would increase the respondent 

burden and might cause some respondents not to participate in the survey. Moreover, because the same 

households may be interviewed more than once, future responses also could be affected. Complicating matters 

further, testing established that the measurement of disability status would require multiple questions, and asking 

about disabilities might be particularly sensitive for some demographic groups. In light of these difficulties, the 

ERMM Work Group decided that the questions on disability should be few while still meeting the requirements set 

forth in the Executive order.

Using the National Comorbidity Survey to test the questions

The ERMM Work Group undertook a summary review of existing disability questions and found that little testing 

had been done on those questions. The limited evidence available showed that the questions did not work well 

and yielded results that were difficult to interpret. Given the absence of a consensus on which questions could best 

identify the disability status of individuals, BLS worked with several academic researchers to identify surveys from 

which to draw questions. These surveys were selected because they were nationally known, their disability 

questions had face validity, or the data collected from their respondents were widely reported. The surveys 

ultimately chosen for disability questions were the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the National 
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

3

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

Health Interview Survey on Disability, the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Scale, the Census 

2000, the National Organization on Disability’s Harris poll, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 

Quality of Life Module. The investigation resulted in a large number of potential questions, which BLS survey 

methodologists and subject-matter specialists evaluated to identify the ones that might work well in the CPS and to 

eliminate those which were unsuitable.

While the process of narrowing the list of candidate questions continued, BLS identified a test vehicle. The 

National Comorbidity Survey (NCS), a nationally representative survey fielded by the Department of Health Care 

Policy of Harvard Medical School, is funded primarily by the National Institute of Mental Health and contains 

extensive questions on mental health. The survey also has many questions on physical well-being and contains 

the Global Assessment Schedule from the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental 

Disorders. The questions on mental health in particular were considered important because research conducted 

for the ERMM Work Group showed that it is difficult to identify individuals with mental health difficulties in a survey. 

These individuals may appear outwardly to have no disability despite the fact that their condition affects many 

areas of their daily living.

Because the NCS collected such extensive information, it enabled BLS to compare a respondent’s answers to the 

test questions with his or her answers to the more detailed NCS questions. Using the expanded set of data from 

the NCS, BLS could identify a respondent’s disability status and then compare the results obtained from the 

respondent’s answers to a smaller set of questions with the conclusion drawn from his or her answers to the larger 

NCS set of questions. In this way, the larger NCS set of questions could be used as a standard to evaluate the 

effectiveness of a small set of questions at correctly identifying a respondent’s disability status.

The candidate questions were identified, modified to conform to the testing requirements, and tested by means of 

cognitive interviews. The purpose of the cognitive testing was twofold: to determine whether respondents 

understood the questions as intended and could provide accurate answers based on that understanding; and, 

more broadly, to discover what information respondents considered in forming their answers.

The NCS was fielded from 2001 through 2002; analysis of the NCS dataset began while the survey was still 

underway in 2001. The results from the NCS interviews were used to classify respondents according to the 

likelihood that they had one or more disabilities. In several cases, the respondent’s disability status was difficult to 

identify, and these respondents were recontacted to gain further information in order to create a more complete 

profile for each respondent.4 From the profiles that were created, analysts were successfully able to ascertain the 

disability status of the majority of respondents. Then, statistical analysis was used to identify seven questions that 

accurately identified most people with disabilities.5

Using the CPS to test the questions

Whenever a change to the CPS is considered, one of the main concerns of the agencies involved is ensuring that 

there are as few adverse effects as possible on the CPS labor force estimates and response rate. In order to 

identify what effect the addition of a set of disability questions might have on labor force estimates, the disability 

question set was tested as a supplement to the February 2006 CPS in a joint effort between BLS, the Census 

Bureau, ODEP, and NIDRR. The set of seven disability questions was asked directly after the end of the regular 
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

4

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

monthly CPS questions. There were two primary goals: to compare the CPS disability rate with that obtained from 

the NCS and to evaluate the effect on CPS response rates in the next month.

The test disability questions appeared in the February 2006 CPS in the following format:

This month we want to learn about the well being of people in this household.

Does anyone in this household who is 15 years old or over have...A hearing problem that prevents them 

from hearing what is said in normal conversation even with a hearing aid?

Does anyone in this household who is 15 years old or over have...A vision problem that prevents them 

from reading a newspaper even when wearing glasses or contacts?

Does anyone in this household who is 15 years old or over have...Any condition that substantially limits 

one or more basic physical activities such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting, or carrying?

Does anyone in this household who is 15 years old or over have...Any other physical disability?

Does anyone in this household who is 15 years old or over have...Any emotional or mental disability?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition lasting 3 months or longer, does anyone in this 

household who is 15 years old or over have...Difficulty learning, remembering or concentrating?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition lasting 3 months or longer, does anyone in this 

household who is 15 years old or over have...Difficulty participating fully in school, housework, or other 

daily activities?

The test used a split-panel design that included households in their first through third or fifth through seventh 

monthly interviews.6 Under this design, half of the households were asked the disability questions while the other 

half were not asked any additional questions. Such a design ensured that enough households received the 

disability questions to provide meaningful data. In addition, differences in the February–March response rate 

between households that were asked the disability questions and those not asked any additional questions could 

be examined to determine whether asking the disability questions adversely affected the likelihood that households 

would continue to participate in the CPS.

The test of the disability questions within the February 2006 CPS revealed that there was no adverse effect on the 

response rates of households that had received the questions. However, the disability rate obtained from the CPS 

was much lower than that produced by the NCS. Disability researchers have long been aware that there is a 

sizable context effect on disability questions that are asked in different surveys. However, the inability to explain or 

quantify this effect caused BLS researchers to require further investigation before accepting the seven disability 

questions for use in the CPS.7

Adoption of ACS questions

About 5 years after BLS began conducting its research into disability questions, another interagency group was 

formed with the goal of revising the disability questions contained in the ACS. This survey had the important role of 

replacing the Census Bureau long form. The ACS is conducted continuously, sampling communities across the 

United States. In 2005, the survey sampled more than 3 million households, a sample much larger than the CPS 

annual sample of about 720,000 households. The interagency group identified a set of six questions that were to 

be placed into the 2008 ACS, and BLS considered the feasibility of adopting these questions into the CPS.8
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

5

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

At that time, the CPS questions had been in development for quite a while and the field testing had raised 

questions that required further examination before they could be used. However, with the creation of the ACS 

questions, there was now another short set of questions, thus creating another option. The Office of Management 

and Budget (OMB) had been encouraging the use of the same methods of measuring demographic characteristics 

(including disability) when possible and recommended adopting the ACS questions rather than continuing with the 

development of other questions for the CPS.

BLS consulted with the ERMM Work Group and OMB to determine whether adopting the ACS questions would be 

supported by those who had been involved in the development effort. Concerns were raised, but the benefit of 

using the same questions for two surveys, along with the possibility of speeding up the development process, 

outweighed those concerns, and the decision was made to adopt the ACS questions for placement into the CPS.

Some changes were made to the questions that were adopted from the ACS in order for them to work properly in 

the CPS. The questions are asked in person or over the phone in the CPS, while the ACS is administered primarily 

through the mail, so certain modifications had to be made to accommodate this difference. Also, the ACS asks the 

question of each individual separately. For the CPS, however, the disability questions were changed in order to 

reduce respondent burden. In the CPS, each disability question would be posed to the entire household and would 

ask about the existence of some household member with a disability; any positive response would be followed up 

with an inquiry to clarify who the person was and whether there were any other household members with that 

condition.

In conjunction with Census Bureau staff working on the CPS, BLS developed training materials to prepare 

interviewers to administer the new questions. These materials included information obtained from Census Bureau 

interviewers in a focus group organized by BLS in order to take the interviewers’ experiences into account.

An individual’s disability status is identified in the same way in the ACS and the CPS. In both surveys, a response 

of “yes” to any one of the six questions indicates that the person has a disability. The disability questions appear in 

the CPS in the following format:

This month we want to learn about people who have physical, mental, or emotional conditions that cause 

serious difficulty with their daily activities. Please answer for household members who are 16 years old or 

over.

Is anyone deaf or does anyone have serious difficulty hearing?

Is anyone blind or does anyone have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does anyone have serious difficulty concentrating, 

remembering, or making decisions?

Does anyone have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

Does anyone have difficulty dressing or bathing?

Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does anyone have difficulty doing errands alone 

such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping?

In June 2008, the disability questions were added to the CPS. In the first month, questions were asked of 

everyone; from July 2008 forward, only those new to the CPS were asked the questions on disability.9
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

6

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

•

•

•

•

•

•

Publication of CPS data on people with disabilities

Despite the fact that the two surveys use the same questions, there are differences between ACS and CPS data 

on disability, as might be expected.10 CPS data are published on a monthly basis, providing a timely measure of 

the labor force status of individuals with disabilities. By contrast, the ACS collects data throughout the year but 

releases data annually. Also, because of the smaller size of the CPS, data on a subnational level are limited, 

whereas ACS data are available for many detailed geographic areas.

The summer and fall of 2008 were used to assess CPS data collection and the estimates themselves. In addition, 

BLS used this time to develop production plans for the release of monthly CPS data on individuals with disabilities. 

The first time BLS publicly released disability data was on February 5, 2009, together with the release of the 

January 2009 employment and unemployment estimates. A list of "Frequently Asked Questions" about the CPS 

disability data was posted on the BLS website in early 2009.11 The public-use microdata are available on the 

Census Bureau’s website,12 and unpublished tables are available from BLS upon request. On February 5, 2010, 

with the release of the January 2010 employment and unemployment estimates, a table containing data on the 

labor force status of people with disabilities was added to the monthly Employment Situation news release. In 

addition, on August 25, 2010, the first news release focusing specifically on the labor force status of people with 

disabilities was published; this release, now issued annually, presents more extensive information than that 

published monthly.13

CPS disability supplement

In 2009, ODEP sponsored an effort to develop a group of questions that could be asked as a supplement to the 

CPS. Together with BLS, ODEP hosted several meetings with interested parties in order to collect input about the 

topics to be covered in the supplement. The goals for the supplement that came from these outreach efforts were 

as follows:

Learn more about the low labor force participation rates of people with disabilities

Better understand how many people with disabilities use current programs designed to prepare them for 

employment and learn whether they are satisfied with such programs

Learn more about the work history of people with disabilities

Identify the different types of barriers to employment that people with disabilities experience

Determine the types of workplace accommodations that assist people with disabilities

Measure the use of financial assistance programs among those with disabilities and whether these 

programs affect their likelihood of working

BLS survey methodologists reviewed ODEP’s proposed questionnaire and conducted two rounds of cognitive 

interviews. Prior to fielding the questionnaire, other agencies with an interest in disability data were given the 

opportunity to comment on it, and after their comments were received BLS worked closely with OMB to incorporate 

recommended changes to the wording of the questions.

In May 2012, BLS fielded the disability supplement. The data collected were included in a news release14 that was 

published on the BLS website on April 24, 2013. The public-use microdata file and technical documentation were 

posted on the Census Bureau's website.15
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

7

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

The availability of monthly labor force data by disability status is a great improvement in the effort to include those 

with disabilities in national statistics. The analysis of these data has revealed labor market difficulties among 

people in this group. Efforts such as the addition of supplementary questions in the May 2012 CPS may lead to a 

further expansion upon what is known about the labor market challenges of those with disabilities. The attempt to 

improve both the set of questions used to identify those with disabilities and the depth of knowledge about this 

group is ongoing and sure to yield even better data with time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors thank Scott Fricker and Anne E. Polivka for their comments on an earlier 

version of this article.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Terence M. McMenamin and Steven F. Hipple, "The development of questions on disability for the Current 

Population Survey," Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2014, https://doi.org/10.21916/

mlr.2014.15

NOTES

1 Labor force estimates of people with disabilities are listed in table 6 of the Employment Situation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 

updated monthly), https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm; click on “Table A-6. Employment status of the civilian population 

by sex, age, and disability status, not seasonally adjusted.”

2 See “Increasing employment of adults with disabilities,” presidential documents, Executive Order 13078 of March 13, 1998 (Federal 

Register, March 18, 1998), http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-1998-03-18/pdf/98-7139.pdf.

3 For a look at the survey, see American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau), https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/.

4 To avoid people being classified as having a disability when they did not (“false positives”), and on the basis of the more extensive 

assessment derived in other parts of the NCS, it was determined that respondents needed to say “yes” to at least two of the seven 

questions asked in order to be classified as having a disability.

5 For a complete description of the NCS test, see Terence M. McMenamin, Thomas W. Hale, Douglas Kruse, and Haejin Kim, 

“Designing questions to identify people with disabilities in labor force surveys: the effort to measure the employment level of adults 

with disabilities in the CPS” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Social Security Administration, Rutgers University, and California State 

University–Dominguez Hills, August 2005), https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2005/pdf/st050190.pdf.

6 Each monthly sample is divided into eight representative subsamples, or rotation groups. A given rotation group is interviewed for a 

total of 8 months, divided into two equal periods. The rotation group is in the sample for 4 consecutive months, leaves the sample 

during the next 8 months, and then returns for another 4 consecutive months.

7 For a complete discussion of the CPS test, see Terence McMenamin, Stephen M. Miller, and Anne E. Polivka, “Discussion and 

presentation of the disability test results from the Current Population Survey,” Working Paper 396 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 

August 2006), https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2006/pdf/ec060080.pdf.

8 For a complete discussion of the ACS questions, see Matthew Brault, Sharon Stern, and David Raglin, “Evaluation report covering 

disability,” 2006 American Community Survey Content Test Report P.4 (U.S. Census Bureau, January 3, 2007), https://

www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2007/acs/2007_Brault_01.pdf.

9 Households in the CPS are divided into eight representative subsamples, as described in note 6. Households that are “new” to the 

CPS include those in their first and fifth months in the survey; in addition, replacement households are considered to be new to the 

survey.
 U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

8

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW 

10 Disability data from the CPS cannot be directly compared with data from other surveys. The disability questions in the CPS were 

originally developed for use in the ACS. Disability data from the ACS collected with the use of these questions were released for the 

first time in the fall of 2009 and annually thereafter. Although data users may wish to compare the estimates from the CPS with those 

from the ACS or other surveys that include disability questions, for several reasons it is unlikely that data from these surveys will yield 

identical estimates of the size and composition of the U.S. disability population. For example, the scope of the CPS is more restrictive 

than that of the ACS: the population covered by the CPS is confined to the civilian noninstitutional population ages 16 and older, while 

the ACS includes those in institutions. There are additional differences as well, including the mode of survey collection and the context 

of the survey. All of the differences need to be accounted for in any attempt to compare data from two different surveys.

11 See “Frequently asked questions about disability data,” Labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of 

Labor Statistics, November 20, 2012), https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsdisability_faq.htm.

12 Disability microdata from the CPS are available from the U.S. Census Bureau. Beginning with data for 2009, disability status 

variables are part of the basic monthly files at https://www.census.gov/data.html. The 2008 disability data are in a separate extract file. 

As with all CPS microdata, personally identifiable information has been removed.

13 See the annual news release titled Persons with a disability: labor force characteristics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/

disabl.pdf.

14 See the monthly news release titled Persons with a disability: barriers to employment, types of assistance, and other labor-related 

issues, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/dissup.pdf.

15 As mentioned in note 12, the disability supplement microdata file is available on the Census Bureau’s website at https://

www.census.gov/data.html. For technical documentation, see Current Population Survey, May 2012, disability supplement file: 

technical documentation CPS—12, https://www.census.gov/prod/techdoc/cps/cpsmay12.pdf.

RELATED CONTENT

Related Articles

Lack of a disability measure in today’s Current Population Survey, Monthly Labor Review, June 2001.

Can the Current Population Survey be used to identify the disabled? Monthly Labor Review, June 1981.

The CPS, work, and disability: a reply, Monthly Labor Review, June 1981.

Related Subjects

Current population survey Labor force Disability