Exploring the Status of Deaf Young People with Qualitative Methods

In our paper, we argue for the following: To evaluate the situation of disabled people we need to examine the interconnectedness of health impairment and social environment. We base our arguments on the results of the first – explanatory – phase of a participatory action research with the community of deaf and hard of hearing youth. We use qualitative methodology to explore the situation of the community and we use the capability approach by Amartya Sen as a theoretical framework. We think that the capability approach could be an alternative concept compared to the mainstream policy frameworks and it can help to understand the situation of disabled people deeper and define the appropriate ways of empowerment.
We write about the practical experiences of our qualitative exploration within a participatory action research process with deaf and hard-of-hearing youth and the interconnectedness of the capability approach and disability studies. Both are new in Hungarian. We intend our paper to caregivers for disabled people – especially for the hearing impaired – social scientists working with participatory research methods and policymakers of the relevant field.