Employee Survey Questions for Self-identifying People with Disabilities


If your organization conducts an employee survey and you ask demographic questions (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, age or years with organization, etc.), then you will want to ask a question or series of six questions that asks employees with disabilities to confidentially identify themselves. Demographic questions allow you to compare responses among the groups in your organization to determine whether there are different perceptions of organizational experiences by those groups. For example, do women perceive the organization and its members differently from men? Even for a general employee survey, demographic comparisons among groups allows the survey to be used for the planning and improvement of diversity initiatives and programs.

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Employee Survey Questions for Self-identifying People with Disabilities

If your organization conducts an employee survey and you ask demographic questions (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, age or years with organization, etc.), then you will want to ask a question or series of six questions that asks employees with disabilities to confidentially identify themselves. Demographic questions allow you to compare responses among the groups in your organization to determine whether there are different perceptions of organizational experiences by those groups. For example, do women perceive the organization and its members differently from men? Even for a general employee survey, demographic comparisons among groups allows the survey to be used for the planning and improvement of diversity initiatives and programs.

Many organizations do not ask about employees with disabilities, a federally-protected class, or ask questions that are vague or ambiguous and potentially misleading. We have adapted six questions for use on employee surveys that the U.S. Bureau of Census uses on their American Community Survey. The use of these questions allows comparisons between the results of your company’s employee survey and data from the American Community Survey, the World Health Organization, and Cornell University’s Disability Status Reports, all of which use essentially the same questions.

Employee surveys should always contain the promise and reality of confidentiality (i.e., the organization cannot and will not identify the individual and their unique answers to questions or report results that could be used to identify an individual employee such as when there is only one disabled person, who is visibly disabled, in a department being reported on and the data is split out by disability).

The six yes/no questions below are those adapted from the Census Bureau. A “yes” answer to any one of them self-identifies the respondent as an employee with a disability. The single question that follows consolidates the six questions into one yes/no question for those organizations that have limited bandwidth to ask additional questions on their employee surveys.

Six Yes/No Questions Adapted from the American Community Survey (ACS)

1. Are you deaf or do you have serious difficulty hearing?

2. Are you blind or do you have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses?

3. Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, do you have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

4. Do you have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs?

5. Do you have difficulty dressing or bathing?

6. Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, do you have difficulty doing errands alone?

Single Yes/No Question That Consolidates the ACS Questions

Are you deaf or blind or do you have serious difficulty hearing, seeing (even when wearing glasses), concentrating, remembering, making decisions, walking, climbing stairs or difficulty doing errands alone, dressing, or bathing?