A quantitative content analysis of person-first language use in healthcare research, healthcare practice, and by support groups for people with disabilities
Barnish, M
Date: 1 October 2014
Journal
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
Publisher
Scientific Research Publishing
Publisher DOI
Abstract
This article reports the results of an original quantitative linguistic study that investigated patterns
of language use referring to people with disabilities in three data source types: written by
support groups run for and by people with disabilities, healthcare researchers, and healthcare
providers respectively. Quantitative ...
This article reports the results of an original quantitative linguistic study that investigated patterns
of language use referring to people with disabilities in three data source types: written by
support groups run for and by people with disabilities, healthcare researchers, and healthcare
providers respectively. Quantitative content analysis was used to categorize the language use in a
target sentence in each of the 9000 data sources in terms of whether it emphasized the person
(person-first language) or the disability (non-person-first language) following published guidelines.
Statistical analysis was conducted using appropriate logistic regression models. There was a
significant increase in the use of person-first language in healthcare research articles over the
time period 1994-2013, although it remained a minority usage. Use of person-first language was
significantly higher in documents produced by support groups run by people with disabilities than
in documents produced by healthcare researchers and practitioners. This suggests that healthcare
researchers and providers may be more likely to refer to people with disabilities in terms that
emphasize the disability rather than the person. Further research is required to confirm these
patterns and investigate whether there is a disparity between the wishes of people with disabilities
and the language behavior of healthcare researchers and practitioners.
Institute of Health Research
Collections of Former Colleges
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