Increasing Equitable Access to Individuals with Disabilities: Participation in Electronic Public Administration Research

Abstract

Individuals with disabilities (both physical and cognitive) constitute 15% of the global population and 25% of U.S. citizens. However, public administration has not given explicit thought to how current research methods and other data collection processes or tools might exclude individuals with disabilities. This lack of attention to research methods and instruments might impose barriers and limit access to participation for individuals with disabilities who would otherwise meet the requirements for participation within the research design. This omission undermines social equity, a critical pillar of public administration, by systematically excluding individuals with disabilities from the research process. Equitable research ensures that scholars are not excluding participants from the research while obtaining insights from the ‘relevant population.’ Current exclusionary practices raise several questions that are addressed in this essay including: (1) What are the implications of equitable access in electronic research? (2) What are the barriers of access for individuals with disabilities who want to participate in research, like surveys conducted through an electronic delivery system? and (3) What would an equitable data collection and research design look like?

Social Equity in Public Administration: Past, Present, and the Future

“…Although JPNA has always been dedicated to publishing articles that address any number of inequities in the public and nonprofit sectors, the Social Equity Section is a supplemental and dedicated outlet for this important work to disseminate topics commonly discounted in government and nonprofit affairs scholarship, as well as emerging social equity issues (Carroll, 2021). Since its inception, articles in the new Social Equity Section have included topics such as expanding sick leave during a global pandemic (Rauhaus & Johnson, 2021), reintegration programs and services for Black female parolees in Alabama (Moorer, 2021), increasing access to public administration research for individuals with disabilities (Allgood, 2021), appropriate terminology usage for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual plus (LGBTQIA+) communities (Meyer & Milleson, 2022), a historical analysis of American constitutional values and democratic beliefs toward social equity progression (Trochmann & Guy, 2022), a call for political action on gun control by the professional sports industry (Thomas & Levine Daniel, 2022), digital inequities in community revitalization (Marshall, 2023), and understanding the "B" in #Black Lives Matter (Houston & Krinch, 2023). They represent a broad array of emerging topics and much-needed discourse in social equity and public administration scholarship.…”

“…In addition, widening the scope of equity calls for a widening view of diverse groups as definitions and criteria are also continually changing. To illustrate, individuals with disabilities are the largest minority groups both globally and in the United States and are often overlooked in scholarship and practice of public administration (Allgood, 2021;Chordiya et al, 2023).…”