This paper presents a research proposal examining employment outcomes for workers with disabilities in the Atlanta region, with a focus on differences between small and large firms. Drawing on federal disability data limitations identified in existing national surveys, the study proposes a qualitative survey instrument designed to measure perceived job satisfaction and productivity among employed workers with and without disabilities. The paper outlines four research questions and corresponding hypotheses, details the rationale for instrument design choices, and addresses key methodological limitations including selection bias and definitional inconsistency in disability measurement. The appendices provide proposed research questions, hypotheses, and a full set of draft survey items with justifications for jury review.
Livermore, Whalen, Prenovitz, Aggarwal, and Bardos (2011) explain how the connection between disability, work productivity, and income benefits the whole of society by reducing reliance on tax-funded support programs (p. 1). All stakeholders have an interest in ensuring maximum productivity from all workers: if stable employment for workers with disabilities frees up resources for other public or private endeavors, and if turning tax consumers into taxpayers helps reduce the burden on those who currently pay, the social return is clear. Given public perceptions of funding constraints and the increased challenges to public services posed by an aging population majority, ensuring stable employment for everyone — especially workers with disabilities — grows more rather than less urgent over time. Even at current levels, Livermore et al. (2011) assert, "it is especially important for policymakers to have access to a wide variety of high-quality data on people with disabilities in order to better understand the needs of this population, assess how existing programs and policies are performing, and plan for the future" (p. 1).
Nonetheless, while many agencies collect data on disability and employment, "existing national disability-related survey and administrative data are limited in their ability to meet the needs of federal programs and policymakers," explain Livermore et al. (2011, p. 1). Constraints include inconsistency between definitions and metrics for disability, weakness in explaining program and service implementation, mismatch between existing administrative data, and "very limited longitudinal information" (Livermore et al., 2011, p. 1), among other opportunities for improvement. "The only large-scale national disability survey data collection effort ever conducted for the U.S. general population," they explain, was the 1994–97 National Health Interview Survey on Disability, which was useful then and as a future baseline, but demographic and economic conditions have changed enough to justify new research even were the data this dissertation aims to produce already available.
Other federal surveys — such as the American Community Survey, American Housing Survey, and Current Population Survey (CPS) — use common questions to identify various types of disability (Livermore et al., 2011, p. 4). The U.S. Department of Labor is implementing a new supplement that will improve the depth and breadth of CPS information, but CPS data is sampled nationally and does not break out particular regions. The surveys that do reveal information about local populations apparently do not identify differences in employer size. This is important because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not cover businesses with fewer than 15 employees, the ADA "undue hardship" clause exempts employers from providing unreasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.), and the cost of accommodation would be relatively higher for small firms than for large firms with greater financial resources.
The result is that existing data lack characteristics that would help improve employment support and program performance for a population who, as Tremblay, Porter, Smith, and Weathers (2011) explain, earned enough in 2009 to graduate off Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) at a growth rate of only one half of one percent per year (p. 19). ADA notwithstanding, workers with disabilities have markedly higher rates of unemployment than non-disabled workers with equal education levels (U.S. Department of Labor, 2011). Julie Hotchkiss (2002) found that despite full implementation of ADA beginning in 1992, unemployment for workers with disabilities increased since then (p. 1), and that part-time employment has increased for workers with disabilities not because such jobs have become more qualitatively attractive, but because of health coverage policy change (Hotchkiss, 2004, p. 25). While this might sound like an improvement compared to no employment, "[p]art-time employment is often associated with jobs that have lower pay, fewer benefits, and less stability," Hotchkiss (2004) explained (p. 25), describing many confounds that distort comparisons of data from studies over time (Hotchkiss, 2002).
This study will provide real, recent, qualitative information on employment for workers with disabilities local to the Atlanta region, contributing to nationwide, regional, and state efforts to increase employment for such workers to parity with the total population. If ADA prohibits employment discrimination (Title I) and employing workers with disabilities who receive health coverage reduces tax transfers, then successful and sustainable placement provides a triple dividend: increasing national productivity, improving self-sufficiency for vulnerable populations, and increasing public resources available for other programs. If, as Kukla and Bond (2012) have suggested, perceptions of self-efficacy, engagement, and interest in qualitative aspects of work predict tenure and other employment outcomes (p. 11), and if higher unemployment indicates lost productivity from job search, hiring costs, and foregone wages and output for workers and employers alike, then determining how employed workers with disabilities rate working for different types of firms can improve performance for public employment programs, workers, and employers all at once. Since firms with fewer than 15 employees are not beholden to ADA (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.), identifying workers with disabilities in these small firms should provide useful insight toward increased employment overall. This study will query employed workers with disabilities from all types of firms, compare worker characteristics in small and large firms, and compare disability status with the general population they work alongside.
In order to reduce preparation cost, this survey will borrow questions from prior studies that have already been tested for face and content validity, as many field-tested models exist. This will also deliver the added benefit of external validity through comparison with matching precedent. The survey instrument will be relatively short compared to many, in order to encourage participation by employers and allow qualitative focus within a reasonable scope of reporting. The length of the survey could introduce a potential confound where larger employers view additional time as a greater cost — particularly if they allow workers to complete the survey at their job sites. Both large and small employers will be asked to encourage participation, in exchange for acknowledgement in the published dissertation. The survey instrument must also be convincingly anonymous in order to reduce respondents' fear of potential reprisal for less than favorable indications of productivity or job satisfaction.
One approach to reducing fear of reprisal would be to anonymize the instrument through Internet-based research applications; however, that would limit inquiry to workers with Internet access. Accordingly, a paper instrument will be deployed, without asking for specific, traceable information. To further triangulate workers with and without disabilities across all firm sizes — including self-employed workers with disabilities — the survey will also be administered in contact with the general public at several different public locations where reasonable demographic heterogeneity seems plausible, determined by juried review of a list of a dozen candidate locations. The final side of this triangle will be closed by interviewing individuals with self-disclosed disabilities through local advocacy and support networks such as non-profit and public employment support and placement agencies.
Research questions attempt to identify worker productivity and job satisfaction through either binary yes/no or open-ended continuous variables, which will allow for means comparison using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson's product-moment correlation, t-tests, and nonparametric tests such as chi-squared — for cases in which answer classes result in frequencies below five, or results deviate from normality for any number of possible reasons. The central limit theorem indicates that a sufficiently large sample size should approach normality as more data points are gathered, including in the face of potential challenges to perfect random sampling where no compulsion to participate exists. In order to ensure robustness, enough samples must be obtained from workers both with and without disabilities. If workers with disabilities are a minority, then those without should surface more frequently in population samples. The survey will therefore continue until 100 workers with disabilities return completed instruments, which should also yield a higher number of responses from non-disabled workers; if not, the minimum number for both classes will be set at 100. On similar grounds, larger firms may provide more employment across the general population, so the survey will continue until 100 workers indicate "small firms" as their place of employment, with a threshold of 100 for both large and small firms in case that assumption does not hold. Since the study is interested in job productivity and satisfaction, only competitively employed individuals will be targeted, and since the survey is anonymous and no test procedure will be administered, human subjects review will either be unnecessary or routine, with the standard disclaimer reinforcing the anonymous nature of the research.
"Selection bias, disclosure, and definitional confounds addressed"
"Four directional hypotheses on satisfaction and productivity"
"Thirteen draft questions with methodological justifications"
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