What Affects Subjective Evaluation of Health?
(2015) The Present and Future of Longitudinal Cross-sectional and Panel Survey Research — Location: Warsaw, Poland (15.December.2015)
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- Abstract
- The subjective evaluation of health is considered a legitimate indicator of overall health status, providing a valid and cost-effective measure of health. POLPAN contains two subjective measures of health: the evaluation of own mood (measured on a scale from 1 – very good to 4 – very bad) and the evaluation of own physical health compared to people of respondent’s age (from 1- much better to 5 – much worse). This paper discusses the meaning and the limitations of these measures. I focus on three aspects. First, I investigate correlation of these measures with measures of specific health problems included in the Nottingham Health Profile. Second, I discuss the propensity and ability of respondents to compare their health with the health of others. Finally, I explore if other measures included in POLPAN allow measuring respondents’ optimism and I discuss the implications for the subjective measures of health. I expect that the study will provide information on how to use and interpret the measures of health included in POLPAN. As similar measures are included in other surveys (e.g. European Social Survey), the study will also have implications for using these data. Finally, I expect that better understanding of the measures of subjective evaluation of health will be useful for framing health questions in the subsequent edition of POLPAN.
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Mikucka, M. (2015). What Affects Subjective Evaluation of Health? The Present and Future of Longitudinal Cross-sectional and Panel Survey Research, Warsaw, Poland. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/38779