Research Study 1
lead by University of Wisconsin-Madison

A Systematic Review and Case Study Analysis of Employer Practices related to Recruiting, Hiring, Training, Integrating, Retaining, and Promoting People with Disabilities

PURPOSE

The purpose of this Exploration and Discovery research is threefold:

(a) to conduct a stakeholder-centered, best-evidence review and synthesis of the literature, both in the United States and internationally, on best employer practices for recruiting, hiring, training, retaining, and promoting persons with disabilities in the workplace;
(b) to conduct a Delphi study with a large sample of employers to further validate promising employer practices identified in our systematic review; and
(c) to conduct a qualitative case study, as a complementary analysis, with nine companies (three small-, three medium-, and three large-sized companies) identified by SPR Consulting (our collaborators on this project) as highly successful employers of people with disabilities to identify and compare their disability-related employer practices with the empirically supported employer interventions identified in our systematic review.

Our stakeholder-centered activities will focus on six overarching research questions that will examine empirically supported strategies used by employers to integrate people with disabilities into the workplace

OVERVIEW

The utilization of a systematic review, Delphi method, and subsequent case studies is an Exploration and Discovery process. Conducting an organized review of the literature to inform the Delphi method, and harnessing the findings of the Delphi component to direct attention to specific areas of employer practices provides a grounded, developmental approach to synthesizing available literature with the realities of employer considerations in the hiring and retention of people with disabilities. As such a synthesis does not currently exists, a process of discovery and inductive reasoning is necessary to provide a broad-based understanding and address the research questions for this project.