Emerson, E. and Llewellyn, G. (2025) The prevalence of disability among adolescents and young adults in low and middle-income countries : A cross-sectional comparison of two measures. Disability and Health Journal, 18 (3): 101777. ISSN 1936-6574
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Background: The Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS) is frequently used to identify disability among adults in national surveys. Concerns have been raised about the utility of the WG-SS given that it fails to include any items relating to psychosocial disability. Objective: To compare prevalence estimates for adolescents and young adults derived from the Washington Group's Child Functioning Module (WG-CFM; age 15–17) and the WG-SS (age 18–25). To estimate the prevalence of impairments among adolescents who were not categorised as having a disability based on the six WG-SS domains. To investigate the association between disability and relative household wealth among adolescents with disabilities who were/were not categorised as having a disability based on the six WG-SS domains. Methods: Secondary analysis of 40 nationally representative surveys collected in low- and middle-income countries. Results: Prevalence estimates for disability were significantly higher among adolescents (15.1 % 95 % 14.8–15.4) than young adults (3.2 % 95 % 3.1–3.3). The WG-SS only identified 21%–23 % of young adults who are likely to have a disability. Among adolescents, those identified as having a disability by the WG-CFM, but as not having a disability by the items in the WG-CFM similar to the six domains of the WG-SS primarily had functional limitations related to anxiety and depression. Household wealth was unrelated to disability based on the six WG-SS domains but was strongly related to disability identified by the WG-CFM. Conclusions: The WG-SS, as it stands, should not be used to identify disability in young adult populations.