Doctoral theses within the Swedish Institute for Disability Research, 2000-2012: A Review of Content and Interdisciplinarity

The Swedish Institute for Disability Research (SIDR) was founded in 2000. The SIDR graduate programmed is a leading research programmed in disability science. The scientific method at SIDR is based on an interdisciplinary approach. The aim of this study is to describe content of doctoral theses presented within SIDR, and to analyze the occurrence of interdisciplinary within the theses published between 2000 and 2012. Forty-one theses were included in the study. First, the manifest data was categorized in a matrix, and second, the latent content was analyzed within a scheme. The scheme included seven criteria within interdisciplinary theory, namely: Is the phenomenon multi-dimensional? Does the aim reflect an interdisciplinary approach? Are the studies nonreductionist? Have multiple methods been used? Is the knowledge integrated? Are the results discussed as a whole? Do they explicitly show an interdisciplinary knowledge? Findings show a variety of disability groups studied within SIDR, but the main disabilities are hearing impairment or deafness, and cognitive and communication difficulties. Different theoretical perspectives are used within the theses. To different extents, an interdisciplinary approach is used as an overall meta-theory.