In the first of two rounds of interviews, 12 Social Security Administration (SSA) beneficiaries, all of whom professed a desire to work, discussed their perspectives on barriers to employment. Two years later, 8 of the 12 engaged in a second round of interviews. Only 1 of the 8 participants had succeeded in becoming self-supporting. After a review…

This article is a review of the long-term follow-up study of competitively employed individuals with significant developmental disabilities by Brown, Shiraga, and Kessler (2006). In this report, 50 people with developmental disabilities were followed for 20 years and their work histories carefully chronicled. Notably, all of these individuals were…

Designed to assess the validity of the determinations among applications for Social Security disability benefits, a comprehensive evaluation of each applicant was made including medical, psychological, social, and vocational data on each subject and his family. A followup study was conducted for 705 applicants from Ohio two to six years after the…

After a mailed questionnaire and two follow-ups, hard-core survey nonrespondents were contacted to ask why they had not responded and what they would have answered had they responded. Results from 28 subjects indicate that efforts to pursue nonrespondents may be unnecessary, because bias resulting from nonresponse appeared minimal. (SLD)