Methodological and conceptual issues in measuring the long term impact of disability: The experience of poliomyelitis patients in Manitoba

This paper is based on a Canadian study which is examining the long term impact of disability among people who developed respiratory or non-respiratory polio during the epidemics of the 1950s and who were admitted to the same Manitoba hospital, the centralized treatment centre for the Province. This research is exploring change in the lives of these individuals by focusing on three conceptually distinct, although empirically overlapping areas or dimensions. The first is called the 'trajectory of disability' and refers to changes in functional status. The second includes those changes which are the product of the interaction between the normal processes of aging and the long term impact of poliomyelitis. The third is changes in the context of disability. This refers not only to changes in medical and technological knowledge, but sociopolitical developments including the emergence of a Disabled Rights Consumer Movement. This paper discusses the methodological and conceptual issues involved in the study, particularly its combination of different methods of data collection and the value of its historical-prospective design for capturing the effects of change over time in each of these different dimensions.