The paper made two crucial contributions: methodological and cognitive. The first one is connected with establishing a tool to monitor implementation of the UNCRPD or more generally, to monitor the QoL of persons with disabilities. The proposed method can be calibrated to monitor results of any public policies towards population with disabilities. Thanks to the proposed normalization procedure it allows for comparative analysis across heterogenic population i.e. for cross country comparisons.

The second contribution refers to the comparison of the level of QoL between persons with and without disabilities in Poland, with the application of the above-mentioned tool across different life domains. In this analytical part of the study, we used symptoms and determinants of the QoL in five life domains, indicated by the UNCRPD: material living conditions, productive and main activity, economic security and physical safety, health, leisure and social interactions. Hence, this study presents the possibilities of the analytical to be used as an element of the evidence based policy towards persons with disabilities [58].

The prepared tool combines all core features of QoL measurement present in the literature for the population with and without disabilities [4, 22], these are:

QoL measurement is composed of the same factors and relationships for all people;

QoL is experienced when a person’s needs are met and when the individual has the opportunity to pursue life enrichment in major life activity settings;

QoL is comprised of both subjective and objective components;

QoL is a multidimensional construct, influenced by individual and environmental factors.

Our approach is based on the assumption, that although persons with disabilities can realize their QoL in different way than persons without disabilities, the measurement process should be similar for both populations if we want to measure equal life enjoyment for those groups. The proposed tool fulfills these requirements. In the literature, the QoL measurement for persons with a particular type of impairment is very subjective and depends on psychological condition, personality, values, norms and attitudes. For example, the same symptoms – difficulties with walking, can mean severe decrease in overall life activity for one person, whereas for the other can be considered and small inconvenience [59]. In this approach the QoL is also divided into domains. The basic domains are: overall approach to health (measured i.e. as self-assessment of health), physical health (measured i.e. as limitations in daily activities, walking limitations), psychological and emotional health (measured as i.e. type and frequency of positive and negative feelings, behavioral and emotional control, concentration, memory), social functioning (measures such as: number of close friends, frequency of meetings with friends. In our approach we diverged from focusing on particular type of impairment, and use domains pointed by Eurostat and present in the UNCRPD.

The tool presented here allows direct comparisons (in scores) of overall and domain QoL for persons with and without disabilities. The applied MIMIC approach enable simultaneous modelling of symptoms and determinants of QoL in each domain.

Not surprisingly, persons without disability experienced higher quality of life as compared to the population with disabilities. Higher QoL scores identified for persons without disabilities in comparison to persons with disabilities were reported in many studies (e.g. [60,61,62]), but the analysis of distributions of QoL in various life domains bring new insight. Moreover, population with disabilities is more heterogenous, which is in line with the evidence of other researchers, who separately analysed the situation of persons with a particular type of disability or activity limitations [11,12,13, 63,64,65,66]. This suggest the necessity to diversify the public policy towards precisely defined needs of particular groups of persons with disability, and it can be achieved by combining efforts of different parities: persons with disabilities, care providers, service providers, organizations supporting persons with disabilities, local authorities, and other public institutions. Our results can be treated as an argument to create the whole bunch of integrated measures from which policy makers can choose.

The results presented in the structural part of the study are consistent with the literature. Similary to the results of our study (both for persons with and without disabilities), we can find evidence in the literature, that gender influence the QoL, however the impact differs with age, and with income and cultural context (e.g. [67, 68]). The results of the interdependencies between age, gender and QoL depend on the particular measurement tool of the QoL used. In our study, the relationship between age and QoL is diversified across domains for both analyzed groups. Those results reflects the life course perspective and ageing process, that deteriorates health and affect different life activities, highlighting the need to take proper preventive actions [69, 70].

In case of the household situation, the negative impact in social relations domains for persons with disabilities can be associated with the fact, that a need of social contacts is achieved within a household, sililarly to other studies [71, 72]. The positive relation between education and QoL for both analyzed groups, with even stronger impact for persons with disabilities, is also confirmed in other studies, as well as the finding that the pattern of influence by different educational levels across domains is more diversified for persons with disabilities [73, 74]. Other studies also confirm positive relation between living on less urbanized areas and QoL for persons with disabilities, that can be connected with stronger family and community relations in rural areas, where the creation of the support network around persons with disabilities is more frequently encountered [75, 76].

Our research is based on case of Poland, because this country is currently in the process of legislative work implementing the UNCRPD, systemic solutions are being designed to adapt national policy to the new paradigm of support provided to persons with disabilities. In addition, the requirements of the process of deinstitutionalizationFootnote 3 of support at the European level make a dignified and independent life of persons with disabilities the main objective of changing public policy towards this group of persons [34]. In this context, both multidimensional approach to QoL as well as the combination of objective and subjective measures of the socio-economic situation of persons with disabilities and their environment are provided by the tool presented in this study.

The empirical analysis does not capture all elements of the UNCRPD, but only those that were measured quantitatively within the dataset used. The tool does not allow for the measurement of elements such as, for example, social attitudes towards persons with disabilities, which may reduce the quality of life of this group. This limitation may become an area for further research into the quality of life of persons with disabilities in Poland. The tool developed in this article enables comparisons between population with and without disabilities in the domains covered by the UNCRPD. Currently, at the European level, proper indicator for measuring QoL for persons with disabilities in comparison to persons without disabilities is missing. For example, Social Scoreboard of European Pillar of Social Rights does not include any indicator covering persons with disabilities (https://composite-indicators.jrc.ec.europa.eu/social-scoreboard/). The proposed tool can fullfil the gap in this area.

The tool itself has also a big potential for comparability on different levels:

Track changes over time,

Compare various groups in the same period of time,

Compare the same group in various countries/regions.

The stability of the EU-SILC database, which was used to calculate the model in this article and its comparability between waves poses the possibility to measure changes over time.Footnote 4 After proper calibration, the tool can be applied to compare the quality of life of persons with disabilities to any other group. Finally, it could be used to compare QoL for persons with disabilities in different countries, with the ability e.g. to prepare the ranking of countries.

The proposed tool can be further tested in other EU countries. The QoL scores calculated in our study should be considered as the long-term outcome of the public policy towards persons with disabilities rather than direct output [77]. The monitoring can be successfully implemented in particular periods of time, depending on the timeliness of data collection.

Limitations

Our research has few limitations. First is related to data collection. We used survey data and as all information from survey data they are derived from respondent’s answers, which are subjective. It especially applies to the definition of disability, which is based on respondent’s answer and it’s not controlled by the interviewer, hence all classification by disability status we use are also based on respondent’s own assessment and these might vary by individual’s perception.

Second limitation is also related to data collection. EU-SILC respondents’ selection criteria do not include disability status. Therefore, although the survey is representative for total population, it is not representative for the population of persons with disabilities. On the other hand, to our knowledge, a large survey representative for population with disabilities is not available.

Third limitation is connected with the questionnaire design. We used secondary data, and had no influence on how the questions were formulated. It is especially important for quality of life domains and indicators in each domain. Any change of the indicator might slightly change the final results and conclusions, although we believe EU-SILC is a well-recognized tool and the list of indicators was validated Eurostat and researchers.