The term disability is a construct that has historically evolved. Depending on perspective, zeitgeist and context, there have been different definitions of the term disability. This questionnaire utilizes the categories of disability that are commonly used in the scientific discourse in the field of special needs education in Germany, i.e. the individual-medical, social, systemic and cultural concepts of disability. The questionnaire uses closed and open questions to assess peoples concepts of disability in terms of these four categories. In the first instance, it is meant to provide all persons active in the fields of special needs education with dialogic access to their own concepts of the term disability to support detached reflection. Second, insights into the quality of teacher education and areas for potential improvement can be garnered with regards to students’ concepts of disability.
The questionnaire includes five open and 25 closed questions. The scale of the individual-medical concept consists of six questions, while the scales of the systemic, social and cultural concepts comprise seven, five and, again, seven questions.
The categories and concepts are discussed in an open, joint research process and their operationalization in the questionnaire is constantly being refined, which is why this is the third version of the questionnaire. All items and open questions of the questionnaire are specified hereafter. All data can be found in the OSF project, see:
Version 0.1: https://osf.io/dm4cs/
Version 0.2: https://osf.io/y5egu/
Version 0.3: https://osf.io/j76t3/