Reference to ICIDH in French surveys on disability

Abstract

This article deals with the development of a basis for data collection and statistics on disability in France. After having recalled the first attempts to establish statistics on disability, highlighting the lack of a reliable conceptual basis, its shows how ICIDH spread out from the geriatrics research field to the disability research field, followed by public management of disability and health care, and recently by the national statistics administration. The article aims at showing that the use of ICIDH always needed adaptations to fit in the forms of data collection and questionnaires. It also demonstrates that its tri-dimensional conception of disability considerably helped to specify the kind of data that were expected and the way they could be organised to enrich the view on disability. In its last part, it mentions what the French reactions were to the submission of ICF by WHO at the World Health Assembly in May 2001 and what could be the consequences in the matter of statistics on disability in France.