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Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries

INTRODUCTION: Some evidence from high-income countries suggests that self-rated health (SRH) is not a consistent predictor of objective health across social groups, and that its use may lead to inaccurate estimates of the effects of inequities on health. Given increased interest in studying and moni...

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Autores principales: Abdulrahim, Sawsan, El Asmar, Khalil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511271/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22985471
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-11-53
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author Abdulrahim, Sawsan
El Asmar, Khalil
author_facet Abdulrahim, Sawsan
El Asmar, Khalil
author_sort Abdulrahim, Sawsan
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Some evidence from high-income countries suggests that self-rated health (SRH) is not a consistent predictor of objective health across social groups, and that its use may lead to inaccurate estimates of the effects of inequities on health. Given increased interest in studying and monitoring social inequities in health worldwide, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the validity of SRH as a consistent measure of health across socioeconomic categories in six Arab countries. METHODS: We employed the PAPFAM population-based survey data on women from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the strength of the association between fair/poor SRH and objective health (reporting at least one chronic condition), adjusting for available socio-demographic and health-related variables. Analyses were then stratified by two socioeconomic indicators: education and household economic status. RESULTS: The association between SRH and objective health is strong in Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, and OPT, but weak in Morocco. The strength of the association between reporting fair/poor health and objective health was not moderated by education or household economic status in any of the six countries. CONCLUSION: As the SRH-objective health association does not vary across social categories, the use of the measure in social inequities in health research is justified. These results should not preclude the need to carry out other validation studies using longitudinal data on men and women, or the need to advocate for improving the quality of morbidity and mortality data in the Arab region.
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spelling pubmed-35112712012-12-01 Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries Abdulrahim, Sawsan El Asmar, Khalil Int J Equity Health Research INTRODUCTION: Some evidence from high-income countries suggests that self-rated health (SRH) is not a consistent predictor of objective health across social groups, and that its use may lead to inaccurate estimates of the effects of inequities on health. Given increased interest in studying and monitoring social inequities in health worldwide, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the validity of SRH as a consistent measure of health across socioeconomic categories in six Arab countries. METHODS: We employed the PAPFAM population-based survey data on women from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the strength of the association between fair/poor SRH and objective health (reporting at least one chronic condition), adjusting for available socio-demographic and health-related variables. Analyses were then stratified by two socioeconomic indicators: education and household economic status. RESULTS: The association between SRH and objective health is strong in Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, and OPT, but weak in Morocco. The strength of the association between reporting fair/poor health and objective health was not moderated by education or household economic status in any of the six countries. CONCLUSION: As the SRH-objective health association does not vary across social categories, the use of the measure in social inequities in health research is justified. These results should not preclude the need to carry out other validation studies using longitudinal data on men and women, or the need to advocate for improving the quality of morbidity and mortality data in the Arab region. BioMed Central 2012-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC3511271/ /pubmed/22985471 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-11-53 Text en Copyright ©2012 Abdulrahim and El Asmar; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Abdulrahim, Sawsan
El Asmar, Khalil
Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries
title Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries
title_full Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries
title_fullStr Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries
title_full_unstemmed Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries
title_short Is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? Evidence from the PAPFAM women’s data in six Arab countries
title_sort is self-rated health a valid measure to use in social inequities and health research? evidence from the papfam women’s data in six arab countries
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511271/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22985471
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-11-53
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