Multi-country comparisons of the transition from school to working life of young people with disabilities: identifying unsolved methodological problems and desiderata Cross-national comparative research on school-to-work transitions of people with disabilities is faced with several fundamental challenges. While the mentioned population is openly or implicitly excluded from most cross-sectional and longitudinal cross-national studies in relevant research fields, the few existing cross-national studies focusing on people with disabilities point to various methodological problems which are of interest to comparative educational research in general. Due to mostly resource-based national disability classification and reporting systems, “people with disabilities” in relevant age groups are typically those who are assigned to a variety of specific services and programs provided within education systems and beyond. Existing data collections reflect diverging, systems-specific legal, educational, and social scientific concepts of disability. As a result, considerable differences and inconsistencies in disability classification rates can be found both on national and international levels. This holds true even for apparently “measurable” categories such as physical disability. In this presentation, we will a.) present key data from our cross-national, comparative study on school-to-work transitions of people with disabilities in German-speaking countries and b.) discuss methodological problems and research desiderata arising from evident data limitations and inconsistencies.

Secondary data analysis, policy analysis

Implications and suggestions for future data collection efforts