Chicago Center for Disability Research (CCDR)

The Chicago Center for Disability Research (CCDR) is a research unit established for the study of social, psychological, and educational issues relevant to the life experience of people with disabilities. CCDR staff is committed to making key information available and useful not only to the academic and professional sector but to all people with disabilities, their supporters, and advocacy groups.

In a context of increasing recognition of the rights and competence of people with disabilities to articulate their own needs and goals, CCDR seeks to improve the quality of disability knowledge by adopting a dual perspective:

• CCDR employs a scholarly perspective derived from staff members' extensive training and field experience in disability-related disciplines.
• CCDR uses an experience-based perspective derived from staff members' own experience in living with disabilities.

CCDR's Advisors include professionals engaged in disability-related work in education, journalism, history, communication, early childhood development, and urban planning. Consistent with the goal of maintaining an experiential as well as professional perspective on disability issues, the majority of CCDR personnel are persons with disabilities.

CCDR uses a social model for exploring disability issues--one that views disability as coming from a wide-ranging relationship of individual and environmental influences. Going beyond the limitations of a purely medical model 17 , this way of looking at disability gives importance to the role of cultural variables in disability experience.

Projects

Projects are selected in response to needs expressed by people living with disabilities in the community and are supervised by researchers with direct disability experience. This contributes significantly to the creative energy and relevance of CCDR's work. It advances the principle of "self-determination for disabled people" to the world of research, education, and community service.

Recent and current projects include:

"Re-defining Wholeness: Formulating a Minority Group Model of Disability Identity Development," a three-year study funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research; "Integration at Home: Strengthening Family Relationships of Adults with Disabilities," funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research exploring and supporting positive family relationships for persons with physical disabilities or chronic fatigue syndrome; "Clinical Versus Experiential Views of Genetic Disability," funded by the National Institutes of Health comparing views of health professionals and persons living with spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, or Down syndrome regarding life with prenatally diagnosable disabilities; and "Experiences of Individuals with Disabilities Pursuing Careers in the Arts: Creating a National Portrait," funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Contact information:

Carol J Gill, PhD, Director
(312) 355-0550