DSQ's mandate commits us to seek out and nurture into publication, manuscripts that represent the enormous diversity in the still-evolving field of disability studies. On our website, that aim is stated thus:

"[DSQ] is a multidisciplinary and international journal of interest to social scientists, scholars in the humanities, disability rights advocates, creative writers, and others concerned with the issues of people with disabilities. It represents the full range of methods, epistemologies, perspectives, and content that compose multidisciplinary disability studies."

Obviously, the aim can be fulfilled only over time, dependent on our receiving diverse submissions. If submissions are articles, they must pass the hurdle of scholarly standards of the peer reviewers; if the submissions are "Commentary", they must discuss issues of substantial policy significance, or hold substantial interest as personal reflections. Presumably, no single issue of DSQ can cover the wide range of methodologies and disciplines that contribute to understanding the issues of people with disabilities.

But it is fair to say that the present issue does a good job of illustrating the diversity that is out there. Among the articles in the theme section are qualitative studies, including an intense reflection on the personal consequences of being a researcher and/or respondent in what is essentially phenomenological research.

By sharp contrast, among the general articles, there is a systematic examination of data collection procedures that are highly quantitative, as used in large-scale federal (and other) surveys. Instead of examining the effect on individuals of being a respondent, this analysis explores the effect on study results of not being a respondent. That paper examines possible bias in results from non-respondents who either cannot be contacted, are unwilling to participate, or who have someone else responding for them.

Moving to the two "Commentaries," they represent, in one case, a serious policy concern, i.e, the need to tackle the task of evaluating the implementation and impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and in the other case, a personal reflection by an Indian educator, on remarkable change in national services and policy in that country's approach to educating children with disabilities.

This issue's authors also represent the range of career stages: We are pleased to be able to publish the 2004 Irving K. Zola award-winning work of an emerging scholar (Leiter), whereas by contrast, Narayan's "Commentary" emphasizes that she is looking back on a 30-year career. The Broun-Heshusius paper mentioned above embodies the span of career stages in that it is explicitly a collaboration between an established faculty member and her doctoral student.

Turning to the section of reviews, in this issue we are able to begin publishing submissions that were shepherded by each of the two Reviews Editors, representing respectively, the Humanities (Editor LeBesco) and the Social Sciences.(Editor Long). Because we are including reviews of works of art such as movies and live theater, there are more items on the "humanities" side.

It would be possible for us to highlight some of the other elements of diversity of scholarship that are in this Spring 2004 issue, but we will leave it to you to embark on your own reading voyage to discover them.

Beth Haller & Corinne Kirchner
Co-Editors