Supporting Disability Inclusion Using Knowledge Attitudes, Practice and Behavioural (KAPB) Surveys
People With Disabilities experience many different challenges in almost all settings. Levante was in the recent past contracted to conduct a KAPB (knowledge, attitudes, practices, and behavioral surveys) as part of a disability inclusion project in three temporary shelters- Nu Po, Umpiem, and Mae La, Thailand. The project’s objectives were to assess the KAPB of Self-Help Group (SHG) members regarding disability fundamentals, advocacy, and empowerment in inclusion, and assess the KAPB of service providers regarding disability fundamentals and their action plan from the awareness-raising and training that they had received through the project’s interventions. The project also sought to assess the safety and well-being levels as reported by people with disabilities through the SHGs and the implementing team’s actions.
For Levante, this was not only our premier KAPB to execute but also our first project that focused solely on people with disabilities in Thailand. With the project being conducted in the Covid-19 context, there were several unique challenges, the main one being lockdowns that were imposed by the government to curb the spread of the Covid-19 infection.
These lockdowns resulted in the team being unable to physically access the shelter for data collection. Instead, Levante had to hire data collection enumerators from within the shelters and provide rigorous training as well as a detailed field plan. While this initially presented a challenge, having enumerators from the location we would be collecting data proved essential. Our camp-based enumerators easily built rapport and received overwhelming support from the community, including community leaders and camp-based organizations, to carry out the interviews. They also have a nuanced understanding of the context and specific terms used in Karen and Burmese, which fed into the adaptation of the surveys.
Because data was collected with people with disabilities as well, the team had to adapt that data collection tools to accommodate variances in disabilities. This created further challenges that the team overcame by ensuring that there was clear communication between the team and the field coordinator who was responsible for training the data collection enumerators and overseeing the data collection process on the ground. The variances in disabilities were identified with the help of the client during the adaptation of the tools to ensure the meaningful participation of the beneficiaries themselves. In cases where data was collected with people with intellectual disabilities, the team ensured that there was a caregiver present for the entire duration of the interviews as these particular interviews were conducted face-to-face.
As opposed to the usual online tools, KOBO, that the team uses for data collection so as to track data in real-time as a quality assurance measure, the team administered paper surveys for this KAPB study. This was done to allow for the adaptation of tools to suit the variances in disability. The field coordinator then checked the data collected to ensure it’s of the required quality before uploading the information onto KOBO for analysis.
Among the main findings at the end of the project was that SHGs were very successful as agents of change as they empowered people with disabilities, as well as the general population in the shelters, by providing training sessions that showed what the people with disabilities could do given opportunities. These abilities include taking up roles such as leadership in the community. Such outcomes align with the objectives of the 2021 International Day for Persons with Disabilities, which seeks to create awareness around enabling leadership and participation of persons with disabilities towards an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable post-Covid-19 world. It stood out for the data collection team that at the end of the project some people with disabilities who were not members of the SHGs expressed interest in joining.
An unintended outcome of the study that also stood out for the team is that the enumerators, who at the time had never worked with persons with disabilities, had learned so much about them and their challenges. We received feedback that some enumerators expressed interest in volunteering with our client organization to support people with disabilities in their community. These enumerators also made valuable suggestions to the consultancy team, which were included in the final recommendations, on how the project interventions and the future studies could be improved.
At the end of the project, the team was able to apply the lessons that we had learned during the KAPB into other projects, including an early childhood education and child protection project which was running at the time in Thailand. This they did by employing a disability lens to assess the crosscutting issues component within the project and making recommendations that were inclusive, including for people with disabilities. Moving forward Levante made a commitment to apply a disability inclusion lens to our future research and evaluation projects, including adapting evaluation designs as necessary to ensure the participation of people with disabilities.