An overview of the many types of studies that fall into the qualitative design genre is provided. Strategies that qualitative researchers use to establish the authors' studies as credible and trustworthy are listed and defined. So that readers will recognize the important contribution qualitative studies have made in the field of special education, a range of well-known and lesser known examples of qualitative research are reviewed. The quality indicators that are important in conducting and evaluating qualitative research are identified. Finally, as an example of the evidence that can be produced using qualitative methods, the authors provide a summary of how 3 studies have provided important information that can be used to inform policy and practice.

Qualitative Studies in Special Education

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us. While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of: -More adultlike children and more childlike adults; -More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and -Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs. The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming "hunters and gatherers of an information age." In other ways, we are rushing forward into a new social world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation. The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

No sense of place : the impact of electronic media on socialbehavior

A reconceptualization of stigma is presented that changes the emphasis from the devaluation of an individual's identity to the process by which individuals who satisfy certain criteria come to be excluded from various kinds of social interactions. The authors propose that phenomena currently placed under the general rubric of stigma involve a set of distinct psychological systems designed by natural selection to solve specific problems associated with sociality. In particular, the authors suggest that human beings possess cognitive adaptations designed to cause them to avoid poor social exchange partners, join cooperative groups (for purposes of between-group competition and exploitation), and avoid contact with those who are differentially likely to carry communicable pathogens. The evolutionary view contributes to the current conceptualization of stigma by providing an account of the ultimate function of stigmatization and helping to explain its consensual nature.

https://courses.washington.edu/pbafhall/514/514%20Readings/evolutionaryoriginsofstigma.pdf

Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: the functions of social exclusion.

The papers explore the background to British academic and political debates over the social model, and argue that the time has come to move beyond this position. Three central criticisms of the British social model are presented, focusing on: the issue of impairment; the impairment/disability dualism; and the issue of identity. It is suggested that an embodied ontology offers the best starting point for disability studies, and some signposts on the way to a more adequate social theory of disability are provided.

The social model of disability: An outdated ideology?

Objectives To update a 2004 systematic review of health care service use and health outcomes related to differences in health literacy level and interventions designed to improve these outcomes for individuals with low health literacy. Disparities in health outcomes and effectiveness of interventions among different sociodemographic groups were also examined. Data sources We searched MEDLINE®, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, the Cochrane Library, PsychINFO, and the Educational Resources Information Center. For health literacy, we searched using a variety of terms, limited to English and studies published from 2003 to May 25, 2010. For numeracy, we searched from 1966 to May 25, 2010. Review methods We used standard Evidence-based Practice Center methods of dual review of abstracts, full-text articles, abstractions, quality ratings, and strength of evidence grading. We resolved disagreements by consensus. We evaluated whether newer literature was available for answering key questions, so we broadened our definition of health literacy to include numeracy and oral (spoken) health literacy. We excluded intervention studies that did not measure health literacy directly and updated our approach to evaluate individual study risk of bias and to grade strength of evidence. Results We included good- and fair-quality studies: 81 studies addressing health outcomes (reported in 95 articles including 86 measuring health literacy and 16 measuring numeracy, of which 7 measure both) and 42 studies (reported in 45 articles) addressing interventions. Differences in health literacy level were consistently associated with increased hospitalizations, greater emergency care use, lower use of mammography, lower receipt of influenza vaccine, poorer ability to demonstrate taking medications appropriately, poorer ability to interpret labels and health messages, and, among seniors, poorer overall health status and higher mortality. Health literacy level potentially mediates disparities between blacks and whites. The strength of evidence of numeracy studies was insufficient to low, limiting conclusions about the influence of numeracy on health care service use or health outcomes. Two studies suggested numeracy may mediate the effect of disparities on health outcomes. We found no evidence concerning oral health literacy and outcomes. Among intervention studies (27 randomized controlled trials [RCTs], 2 cluster RCTs, and 13 quasi-experimental designs), the strength of evidence for specific design features was low or insufficient. However, several specific features seemed to improve comprehension in one or a few studies. The strength of evidence was moderate for the effect of mixed interventions on health care service use; the effect of intensive self-management inventions on behavior; and the effect of disease-management interventions on disease prevalence/severity. The effects of other mixed interventions on other health outcomes, including knowledge, self-efficacy, adherence, and quality of life, and costs were mixed; thus, the strength of evidence was insufficient. Conclusions The field of health literacy has advanced since the 2004 report. Future research priorities include justifying appropriate cutoffs for health literacy levels prior to conducting studies; developing tools that measure additional related skills, particularly oral (spoken) health literacy; and examining mediators and moderators of the effect of health literacy. Priorities in advancing the design features of interventions include testing novel approaches to increase motivation, techniques for delivering information orally or numerically, "work around" interventions such as patient advocates; determining the effective components of already-tested interventions; determining the cost-effectiveness of programs; and determining the effect of policy and practice interventions.

/pdf/health-literacy-interventions-and-outcomes-an-updated-chswt8nilu.pdf

Health literacy interventions and outcomes: an updated systematic review.

In this study of the history and contemporary significance of the cultural assumptions that govern our conception of people with disabilities, Lennard J. Davis argues that thinking the subject remains trapped inside the discourse of "ableist" ideology. Davis at once shows how our current notions about the physically disabled came into being, and argues for a whole new way of thinking about disability. The book surveys the emergence of a cluster of concepts of "normalcy" as these matured in Western Europe and the United States over the past 250 years. Linking such notions to the concurrent emergence of discourses about the nation, Davis shows how the modern nation-state constructed its identity on the backs, not only of colonized subjects, but of its physically disabled minority. In a chapter on contemporary cultural theory, the book explores the pitfalls of privileging the figure of sight in conceptualizing the nature of textuality. And in a treament of nudes and fragmented bodies in Western art, it shows how the ideal of physical wholeness is both demanded and denied in the classical aesthetics of representation. The book re-configures the boundaries of the conceptual universe, inserting disability into the familiar triad of race, class and gender, with results that can only be welcomed by progressives. Lennard J. Davis is the author of "Factual Fictions" and "Resisting Novels".

Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body

Preface to the fourth edition -- Historical perspectives -- Constructing normalcy / Lennard J. Davis -- Disability and the justification of inequality in american history / Douglas Baynton -- "Heaven's special child" : the making of poster children / Paul Longmore -- Disabling attitudes : u.s. disability law and the ada amendments act / Elizabeth Emens -- The politics of disability -- Disabling postcolonialism : global disability cultures and democratic criticism / Clare Barker and Stuart Murray -- Abortion and disability : who should and should not inhabit the world? / Ruth Hubbard -- "Disability rights and selective abortion" / Marsha Saxton -- Disability, democracy, and the new genetics / Michael Berube -- A mad fight : psychiatry and disability activism / Bradley Lewis -- The institution yet to come : analyzing incarceration through a disability lens / Liat Ben-Moshe -- Stigma and illness -- Stigma : an enigma demystified / Lerita M. Coleman-Brown -- Unhealthy disabled / Susan Wendell -- Theorizing disability -- "Reassigning meaning" / Simi Linton -- Enabling disability : rewriting kinship, reimagining citizenship / Faye -- Aesthetic nervousness / Ato Quayson -- The social model of disability / Tom Shakespeare -- Narrative prosthesis / David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder -- The unexceptional schizophrenic : a post-postmodern introduction / Catherine Prendergast -- Deaf studies in the 21st century : deaf-gain and the future of the human / H-Dirksen L. Baumann and Joseph J. Murray -- Identities and intersectionalities -- The end of identity politics : on disability as an unstable category / Lennard J. Davis -- Disability and the theory of complex embodiment : for identity politics in a new register / Tobin Siebers -- Defining mental disability / Margaret Price.

The Disability Studies Reader

1. THE END OF IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE BEGINNING OF DISMODERNISM 2. CRIPS STRIKE BACK 3. DR. JOHNSON, AMELIA, AND THE DISCOURSE OF DISABILITY 4. CRIMINAL STATEMENTS 5. WHO PUT THE THE IN THE NOVEL? 6. THE RULE OF NORMALCY 7. BENDING OVER BACKWARDS 8. GO TO THE MARGINS OF THE CLASS 9. A VOYAGE OUT (OR IS IT BACK?)

Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions

"Nowadays, most readers take the intersection between fiction and fact for granted. We've developed a faculty for pretending that even the most bizarre literary inventions are, for the nonce, real...The value of Davis's book is that it explores the h

Lennard J. Davis

Papers

Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body

The Disability Studies Reader

Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions

Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel

Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History