Using the ICF to code and analyse women's disability narratives.

Abstract

This article describes the use of the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) as a conceptual framework for processing and analyzing the narratives of 50 community-dwelling women with a spinal cord injury. The women were participants in a federally-funded study of stress and coping over the life course. The paper describes the development of a coding scheme and data reduction techniques used to process qualitative data. The initial results of three phases of data analysis are then presented: (i) the construction of matrices to display data so as to permit pattern finding; (ii) the mapping of specific ICF codes to text to produce a more finely grained analysis of environment-related stressors, and (iii) a thematic analysis of text depicting the dynamics of person-environment interaction. Of potential value to the further elaboration of the ICF is a fleshing out of the personal factors component of the ICF and the provision of a context-driven, process view of person-environment interaction. It is hoped that this article will stimulate continued discussion of person-level factors. The concept of coupling suggests also a need to focus research attention on the bi-directional and ever evolving linkages connecting person to environment.