Summary of key elements: data collection and information management
Preparedness
- Develop guidance on how humanitarian actors can strengthen data collection to enhance the inclusion of persons with disabilities, while safeguarding privacy and data protection.
- Identify reliable sources of data on persons with disabilities, including censuses, administrative databases, and data collected by OPDs or specialized NGOs.
- Map information on OPDs, accessible services and public facilities.
- Build capacity to collect data on persons with disabilities by training local actors and identifying and translating key data collection tools.
- When surveys such as the DHS, MICS and national censuses are conducted in countries at high humanitarian risk, emphasize the value of using and incorporating tools tested in humanitarian contexts, such as the Washington Group Short Set of Disability Questions and the UNICEF-Washington Group Child Functioning Module. Identify other entry points in humanitarian data collection processes where use of these methodologies is appropriate, such as the Displacement Tracking Mechanism managed by IOM.
Needs assessment and analysis
- Organizations with relevant capacity should work with Assessment Working Groups to include disability in needs assessments and associated analyses.
- Collect information on services that include and target persons with disabilities in humanitarian contexts. To do so, modify operational management tools such as the standard 5W process.
- In protracted crises, humanitarian actors have an opportunity to improve data collection techniques. Some situations are stable enough to permit population-level surveys, but often the mobility of affected populations is such that innovative statistical techniques must be used to collect random samples.
- Where reliable data on persons with disabilities are unavailable or outdated, use the 15 per cent estimate as a benchmark for planning purposes.
Strategic planning
- Use data on persons with disabilities to inform planning and to prioritize and target assistance.
Resource mobilization
- The demand for data on persons with disabilities in humanitarian action would be strengthened by appropriate donor policies and reporting requirements, results frameworks that include specific output or outcome indicators related to persons with disabilities, and resource tracking using markers to identify projects that are disability-inclusive.
- Targets related to persons with disabilities should be explicitly referenced in funding appeals and projects.
Implementation and monitoring
- Disaggregation of data collected through monitoring tools and processes, including protection monitoring, is key to identifying accessibility and other gaps for persons with disabilities.
- Modify standard data collection tools and databases used in humanitarian action to include qualitative data on how effectively programmes and interventions are reaching persons with disabilities.
- Contracts and reporting templates for implementing partners in a humanitarian response should require them to define and report the number or proportion of persons with disabilities that their interventions reach.
Evaluation
- Effective evaluation depends on regular monitoring and data collection, including registration processes in refugee situations. Standard evaluation terms of reference in humanitarian contexts should require humanitarian actors to disaggregate data by disability where data are collected on individuals (whether they benefit from or contribute to the response). Further, evaluations should include persons with disabilities among their informants, and questions should be asked that elicit specific information on persons with disabilities.
- Evaluators might develop disability-specific indicators to measure progress towards reaching persons with disabilities. Indicators might measure, for example, the percentage of persons with disabilities reached by specific interventions.