ABSTRACT
Data on disablement describe and classify the experiences of people with disabilities and are required not only for policy making and service planning but also for decision making at the level of clinical and social work. However, there has been little debate about how representations of data on disablement might be constructed and interpreted (for an exception, see Williams 1979). Moreover, applications of conventional classification and scaling techniques have not been rigorously validated as representations of disablement (Duckworth 1983). Rather, attention has focused-rightly-on the meaning of disablement: on what information is required and on why information is being collected (Bury and Wood 1978; Walker 1980; Oliver 1987).
