2.8 Disabled / Enabled Archaeologists

Latest Data: 2020

This page examines the disabilities of UK professional archaeologists.

Highlights

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Discussion of the past under-reporting of disabilities and how archaeology compares with the overall UK workforce can be found on 1.2 Organisations’ Disability Rates and Reporting.

This page goes into more detail on those results. Of the 999 professional archaeologists that answered the question on disability, 105 (11%) indicated that do have a disability, 894 (89%) did not. The wording of the question was the legal definition of being disabled in the UK, “do you have a physical or mental impairment that has a long-term negative effect on your ability to carry out normal daily activities?”, but, those that responded ‘yes’ may not consider themselves to be disabled. The term ‘disabled’ is used because it has this legal definition.

Respondents were also asked about issues they experience and their particular forms of disability (they could choose more than one), the most commonly reported being physical disabilities. The results track close to the UK data on working people with disabilities (though not 100% comparable, as UK data relate to primary disability, this data includes secondary disabilities). An exception is the very high number of archaeologists with Information processing disabilities. This is likely due to the high number of dyslexic archaeologists that have been observed in other studies.

Table 2.8.1: Responses from employed/self-employed archaeologists regarding the nature of their disabilities for 2019-20. Respondents could choose more than one option. UK Data from ONS and only primary disability.

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Those that indicated they have a disability were asked if this was caused or exacerbated by work. About half responded yes, which is almost the same results for the whole UK from the Department for Work and Pension’s ‘Health and wellbeing at work: survey of employees‘.

Table 2.8.2: Responses from employed/self-employed regarding whether their disabilities were caused by or exacerbated by their work, for 2019-20. UK data is from Department for Work and Pension’s ‘Health and wellbeing at work: survey of employees’.

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Age and emotional disabilities

One of the correlations discovered during the analysis that met the threshold p < .001 (see methods page for more on this) was that emotional disabilities (including, but not limited to: anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, depression, etc.) were more frequently reported by younger archaeologists:

Table 2.8.3: Counts and percentages of those who are employed or self-employed in archaeology and identify as having an emotional disability (including but not limited to: anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, depression, etc.). Broken down by ages.

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Image Credit

From University of Reading, Bournemouth University (2006) Inclusive Accessible Archaeology [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000211 . Licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.

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