Researching Students with Disabilities: The Importance of Critical Perspectives

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors critically review the current state of quantitative research on college students with disabilities and examine the exclusion of this marginalized population from much of our research. They propose ways to conduct research that more fully accounts for this diverse and important college population. The authors argue that critical quantitative research will produce more thorough knowledge and, in turn, policies and practices that will lead to more equitable college outcomes for students with disabilities.

Using Qualitative Research to Document Variations in Student Experience

“…We made the decision to focus on students with nonapparent disabilities because prior literature on the higher education experiences of students with disabilities had revealed that public perceptions of disability focused on mobility and sensory impairments (Kimball, Wells, Lauterbach, Manly, & Ostiguy, ). As a result, neither empirical literature nor evidence‐based practice systematically addressed the experiences of people with comparatively high incidence, but nonapparent disabilities like attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and chronic medical issues (c.f., Kimball, Vaccaro, & Vargas, ; Vaccaro et al., ).…”

“…Disability services offices have not historically offered this form of support (Kimball et al., ). Finally, our study encourages campuses to look beyond the physical dimensions of disability to acknowledge the many ways that students with disabilities engage on campus, and not to only consider their experiences when assessing disability services offices (Vaccaro et al., ). In short, people with disabilities are more than those disabilities, and qualitative work can help support that claim.…”

“…Additionally, they provide important information about a population of students that remains both underserved and understudied (Vaccaro et al., ). Existing quantitative measures of athletic participation undertaken by institutional researchers (e.g., reporting to the National Collegiate Athletic Association) do not include measures related to disability, and indeed, given federal protections related to disability status, disability status information may not even be available to institutional researchers on all campuses.…”

“…Indeed, institutional research often adheres to a basic belief offered by postpositivist science: quantification not only gives us a picture of the topic of study that is relatively close to reality, but also that this picture can inform both the creation of theory and sound practice. However, recent educational research suggests that although quantitative methods can accurately capture student experiences, they capture the experiences of some students better than others (e.g., Faircloth, Alcantar, & Stage, ; Vaccaro, Kimball, Ostiguy, & Wells, ). Unfortunately, the students who are most at risk for being missed by trend‐oriented quantitative data analyses are those students who hold institutionally minoritized identities.…”

“…The focus on normalizing results to fit a bell curve means that those students with widely divergent experiences are not represented; they can only be represented by studies and data sets that intended to capture data about their experiences from the outset (cf. Luker, ; Vaccaro et al., ). Far from representing a form of standardized error, those students whose voices are not captured by broad applications of quantitative approaches require deliberate attention on the behalf of institutional researchers.…”