Disability and censuses: Methodological challenges and experience in measuring disability

The present article has the primary objective of displaying stances about the role, the reach and limitations of a Census as a means of collecting data on disability in different countries. It will present the purpose of the Recommendation from the Washington Group on Disability Statistics in the context of introducing disability-related questions in national censuses from the year 2010 onwards. Furthermore, the article will inspect the limitations regarding measuring disability and functional difficulties through the means of a census, relying on the experience from other countries and scholarly research. This part will strongly focus on the formulations made by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the set of short questions presently used in national censuses. Finally, the article will briefly observe the experience from the Serbian national census in 2011 in measuring functional difficulties for the first time. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179023]