A comparison of two survey measures of health status

Ralph Leavey and David Wilkin

Social Science & Medicine, 1988, vol. 27, issue 3, 269-275

Abstract: Health service planning requires information on levels of health and illness in the population. Surveys, such as the British General Household Survey (GHS) rely on self-reports of health, illness and restriction, but interpretation of results is problematic. Multi-item measures such as the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) tap different aspects of health and allow respondents less freedom to define health and illness. In a survey of 1962 adults, health questions from the GHS and the NHP were used, and the results compared. Responses to GHS questions were associated with NHP scores, but the strength of the associations between the four GHS questions and the six NHP items varied considerably. Reporting a recent restriction was only weakly associated with NHP scores. Associations between GHS questions and NHP scores were weakest for the NHP items measuring emotional reactions, sleep and feelings of social isolation. Reporting good health or no illness in response to GHS questions was no guarantee that respondents experienced no health problems. Those who use health data from the GHS, NHP or similar surveys should look closely at whether such data provide appropriate information for their purposes.

Keywords: health; status; measurement; health; survey; illness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(88)90131-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:27:y:1988:i:3:p:269-275

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().