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Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries
BACKGROUND: The Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI), the measure underlying the European indicator Healthy Life Years (HLY), is widely used to compare population health across countries. However, the comparability of the item has been questioned. This study aims to further validate the GALI...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4298058/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25555466 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-15-1 |
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author | Berger, Nicolas Van Oyen, Herman Cambois, Emmanuelle Fouweather, Tony Jagger, Carol Nusselder, Wilma Robine, Jean-Marie |
author_facet | Berger, Nicolas Van Oyen, Herman Cambois, Emmanuelle Fouweather, Tony Jagger, Carol Nusselder, Wilma Robine, Jean-Marie |
author_sort | Berger, Nicolas |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI), the measure underlying the European indicator Healthy Life Years (HLY), is widely used to compare population health across countries. However, the comparability of the item has been questioned. This study aims to further validate the GALI in the adult European population. METHODS: Data from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), covering 14 European countries and 152,787 individuals, were used to explore how the GALI was associated with other measures of disability and whether the GALI was consistent or reflected different disability situations in different countries. RESULTS: When considering each country separately or all combined, we found that the GALI was significantly associated with measures of activities of daily living, instrumental activity of daily living, and functional limitations (P < 0.001 in all cases). Associations were largest for activity of daily living and lowest though still high for functional limitations. For each measure, the magnitude of the association was similar across most countries. Overall, however, the GALI differed significantly between countries in terms of how it reflected each of the three disability measures (P < 0.001 in all cases). We suspect cross-country differences in the results may be due to variations in: the implementation of the EHIS, the perception of functioning and limitations, and the understanding of the GALI question. CONCLUSION: The study both confirms the relevance of this indicator to measure general activity limitations in the European population and the need for caution when comparing the level of the GALI from one country to another. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2288-15-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4298058 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42980582015-01-20 Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries Berger, Nicolas Van Oyen, Herman Cambois, Emmanuelle Fouweather, Tony Jagger, Carol Nusselder, Wilma Robine, Jean-Marie BMC Med Res Methodol Research Article BACKGROUND: The Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI), the measure underlying the European indicator Healthy Life Years (HLY), is widely used to compare population health across countries. However, the comparability of the item has been questioned. This study aims to further validate the GALI in the adult European population. METHODS: Data from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), covering 14 European countries and 152,787 individuals, were used to explore how the GALI was associated with other measures of disability and whether the GALI was consistent or reflected different disability situations in different countries. RESULTS: When considering each country separately or all combined, we found that the GALI was significantly associated with measures of activities of daily living, instrumental activity of daily living, and functional limitations (P < 0.001 in all cases). Associations were largest for activity of daily living and lowest though still high for functional limitations. For each measure, the magnitude of the association was similar across most countries. Overall, however, the GALI differed significantly between countries in terms of how it reflected each of the three disability measures (P < 0.001 in all cases). We suspect cross-country differences in the results may be due to variations in: the implementation of the EHIS, the perception of functioning and limitations, and the understanding of the GALI question. CONCLUSION: The study both confirms the relevance of this indicator to measure general activity limitations in the European population and the need for caution when comparing the level of the GALI from one country to another. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2288-15-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-01-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4298058/ /pubmed/25555466 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-15-1 Text en © Berger et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. 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 credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Berger, Nicolas Van Oyen, Herman Cambois, Emmanuelle Fouweather, Tony Jagger, Carol Nusselder, Wilma Robine, Jean-Marie Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries |
title | Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries |
title_full | Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries |
title_fullStr | Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries |
title_full_unstemmed | Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries |
title_short | Assessing the validity of the Global Activity Limitation Indicator in fourteen European countries |
title_sort | assessing the validity of the global activity limitation indicator in fourteen european countries |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4298058/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25555466 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-15-1 |
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