A recent survey commissioned by Disaboom (sorry, but the name just make me cringe) finds that 52% of Americans would rather be dead than severely disabled. The survey also reveals that individuals with higher levels of income or education are more likely to prefer death over disability. Unsurprisingly, older people are likely to be more accepting of a severe disability than younger people.
The only thing that surprises me about these results is that the percentage of respondents favoring death wasn’t higher. Otherwise, this is pretty ho-hum stuff. But I’m also a little frustrated with the survey’s methodology. Here’s how the researchers framed the question:
Which would you choose: Living with a severe disability that forever alters your ability to live an independent life, or death?
I mean, that’s kind of a stark choice, isn’t it? It doesn’t get at the nuances of actually living with a severe disability. Maybe something like this would be better:
Which would you choose:
Living with a severe disability (but you could still live in your own place, hold a job, have friends, catch a movie, take a trip, maybe fall in love),
OR
death?
I realize that’s an equally horrible survey question, but you get my point.
Funny, I was asking myself This same question last night….being an SMA-er myself with no positive family support, I wonder sometimes! For me, I hope to live until I am 90 despite my potholes and barricades in lifes mysterious road….and maybe to piss a few people off! Lol!
Love your BLOGS! You amaze me!
What kind of question is this? WHO asks these kinds of things? Do they ask people if they’d rather be low income white, or middle income Native American? Would they rather be missing their top two teeth or have webbed toes? Seriously? What BENEFIT could such surveys POSSIBLY have to Americans? Sorry – I know I’m preaching to the choir.
I know this whole topic broached ALOT of thought but I didn’t know it was worded that way. I think ablebodied have no frame of reference for being disabled. But your right that is a heck of a way for them to word it. Heck, maybe I’d picked death, naw, can’t ever see picking that unless I was brain dead.
Suzanne