General subjective health status or age-related subjective health status: does it make a difference?
Abstract
This study examines the agreement between two subjective health measures, a general question on subjective health and an age-related question on subjective health. The study identifies specific groups differing in their answer to the two questions. These measures are used frequently in health-related studies where a short measure is needed to estimate health. Therefore, it is important to understand how the population estimates its health. The study based on 793 telephone interviews shows that among respondents aged 65-75 with no reported diseases and those with less than 12 years of education with no reported diseases, the agreement between the two questions was poor. These two groups reported better health when they were asked to compare their health to people of their age and sex. Excellent agreement between the two questions was reported in those aged 55-64 with no diseases. The respondents having more years of education reported better health than the less educated but only when using the age-related subjective health measure. These findings demand caution when using different wordings in questions on subjective health in non-homogeneous populations.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Social Science & Medicine.
Volume (Year): 53 (2001)
Issue (Month): 10 (November)
Pages: 1373-1381
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description
Order Information:
Postal: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
Web: http://www.elsevier.com/orderme/journalorderform.cws_home/315/journalorderform1/orderooc/id=654&ref=654_01_ooc_1&version=01
Related research
Keywords: Subjective health Education Age Elderly Israel;References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Pieniak, Zuzanna & Verbeke, Wim & Olsen, Svein Ottar & Hansen, Karina Birch & Brunsø, Karen, 2010. "Health-related attitudes as a basis for segmenting European fish consumers," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 448-455, October.
- Neil J Buckley & Frank T Denton & A Leslie Robb & Byron G Spencer, 2005.
"Socioeconomic Influences on the Health of Older Canadians: Estimates Based on Two Longitudinal Surveys,"
Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers
139, McMaster University.
- Neil J. Buckley & Frank T. Denton & A. Leslie Robb & Byron G. Spencer, 2006. "Socio-economic Influences on the Health of Older Canadians: Estimates Based on Two Longitudinal Surveys," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 32(1), pages 59-84, March.
- Neil J Buckley & Frank T Denton & A Leslie Robb & Byron G Spencer, 2005. "Socioeconomic Influences on the Health of Older Canadians: Estimates Based on Two Longitudinal Surveys," Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports 402, McMaster University.
- N Powdthavee, 2008.
"Ill-Health as a Household Norm: Evidence from Other People's Health Problems,"
Discussion Papers
08/21, Department of Economics, University of York.
- Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2009. "Ill-health as a household norm: Evidence from other people's health problems," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 251-259, January.
- Gil, Joan & Mora, Toni, 2011.
"The determinants of misreporting weight and height: The role of social norms,"
Economics & Human Biology,
Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 78-91, January.
- Joan Gil & Toni Mora, 2009. "The Determinants of Misreporting Weight and Height: The Role of Social Norms," Working Papers 2009-01, FEDEA.
- Sermet, Catherine & Tubeuf, Sandy & Devaux, Marion & Jusot, Florence, 2008. "Hétérogénéité sociale de déclaration de l’état de santé et mesure des inégalités de santé," Open Access publications from Université Paris-Dauphine urn:hdl:123456789/423, Université Paris-Dauphine.
- Aline Désesquelles, 2012. "Self-Rated Health of French prison inmates : measurement and comparison with other health indicators," Working Papers 178, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED).
- Sharifah Haron & Deanna Sharpe & Jariah Masud & Mohamed Abdel-Ghany, 2010. "Health Divide: Economic and Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Reported Health Among Older Malaysians," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 328-337, September.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:53:y:2001:i:10:p:1373-1381For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

