In this study - in particular the initial survey portion- being a person with mental disability was defined as someone who has received mental health care and/or a mental health diagnosis. Participants did not have to identify as disabled to participate in the survey and participants were informed that they could otherwise identify with terms like mental-health services consumer, a psychiatric survivor, a person with mental illness, a psychocrip, or as someone with their particular diagnosis. 

Person with Mental Disability

A call for participants was sent out once the survey closed. Over 100 people responded to the call for interviews, and 38 interviews were completed. Since the response to the call for interviews exceeded the capacity of the researchers, diversity sampling/maximum variable sampling was used to select interviewees.

Method for Selecting Interviewees

The initial survey for the Disabled Academics Study (DAS) only included participants with what Price classifies as "mental disabilities," whereas the interviews included participants with a wide range of disabilities.

Price notes that multiple shifts occurred during the designing and conducting of the Disabled Academic Study: mainly widening the types of disabilities included and the types of academics included. 

Shifts in Designing the Study

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Including Multiple Types of Disabilities in DAS

Initially the Disabled Academics Study (DAS) only focused on disabled faculty but, the study expanded to later include graduate students. While the study initially did not have the resources to tailor the study to some of the unique considerations of graduate students' interactions with academia Price later decided to include graduate students since many graduate student simulanteously hold faculty, staff, or administrator roles - since 70 percent of postsecondary instruction is carried out by non-tenure-track instructors.

Including Graduate Students in DAS

Price notes that to achieve the values of accessibility and interdependence, Price and the research team drew on a research method Price conceived during her work on the book Mad at School which she called an interdependent qualitative research paradigm and the team drew on principles that Price outlined in her article "Disability Studies Methodology."

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