METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN OF THE DISABLED GEOSCIENTISTS’ EXPERIENCE SURVEY

Context-specific instruments needed to understand the challenges and opportunities faced by disabled individuals in the geosciences continues to be a significant gap in geoscience education research. In this presentation, we will outline two methodological stages for the design of a survey aimed at capturing the experiences of disabled geoscientists within the academic and professional spheres. In the first stage of the design process, we explored existing literature on disability and inclusion in STEM and other professional fields to formulate focus group questions. These questions were discussed by group of geoscience education researchers, disability advocates, and geoscience professionals to ensure relevance and content validity. We then used the questions to collect data from three focus groups attended by thirteen disabled geoscientists. We employed formative qualitative research design to identify major themes and codes in the focus group data and categorized participants experiences into six categories of challenges and opportunities faced by disabled geoscientists related to barriers, disclosure, support systems, needs, and empowering activities. We are currently in the second stage of survey development and evaluation where we have converted these categories into Likert scale and open-ended items for the initial survey which we call “The Disabled Geoscientists’ Experience Survey (D-GeoES)”. The initial D-GeoES is currently under independent review by a survey design expert, geoscience education researchers, and geoscience professionals. For each individual item on the survey, we have asked reviewers to determine whether they are appropriate and useful or not useful to measure disability experiences. We hope to have a panel review meeting with all the reviewers, finalize the survey, and collect data for validation psychometric evidence.