Compare methods

	Disability Life-History Narrative Method	Capability Approach to Disability
Field	Disability Studies	Disability Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2008	2006
Originator	Brett Smith & Andrew C. Sparkes (narrative inquiry in disability studies)	Sophie Mitra (building on Amartya Sen)
Type	Narrative-inquiry qualitative method for disability research	Conceptual framework operationalized for disability measurement
Seminal source	Smith, B., & Sparkes, A. C. (2008). Narrative and its potential contribution to disability studies. Disability & Society, 23(1), 17-28.	Mitra, S. (2006). The Capability Approach and Disability. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 16(4), 236-247.
Aliases	Disability Narrative Inquiry, Narrative Analysis in Disability Studies, Disability Life Story Method, Biographical Narrative Method in Disability Research	Capability Approach and Disability, Capability Model of Disability, Sen Capability Approach for Disability, Capability Deprivation Analysis of Disability
Related	3	3
Summary	The disability life-history narrative method collects and analyzes disabled people's life stories as a way of understanding disability from the inside, attending not only to what people say happened but to how they tell it. Articulated for the field by Brett Smith and Andrew Sparkes in their 2008 Disability & Society article on narrative's contribution to disability studies, the approach distinguishes the storyteller stance (working with stories, telling alongside) from the story-analyst stance (analyzing stories as objects), and offers structural, performative, and creative-analytic ways to interpret narratives. Its distinctive contribution is to treat stories as both data about lives and as the very means through which disabled identity and meaning are made.	The capability approach to disability, articulated by Sophie Mitra in 2006 by adapting Amartya Sen's capability framework, defines disability as a deprivation of capabilities or functionings that arises from the interaction between a person's characteristics (including impairment), their resources, and the personal, social, and environmental conversion factors that turn resources into real opportunities. Rather than locating disability in the body (the medical model) or solely in society (the strong social model), it locates disability in the gap between what a person is actually able to do and be and what they could do and be. This reframing gives disability studies a measurement-friendly account that distinguishes potential from actual disability.