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Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel

BACKGROUND: The perceived health status indicator included in the OECD Health Statistics suffers from severe methodological limitations related to data collection. Furthermore, this indicator is also included in the OECD's Better Life Index, thus distorting the total health score of some OECD c...

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Autor principal: Levi, Baruch
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5237327/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28101328
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-016-0128-x
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author Levi, Baruch
author_facet Levi, Baruch
author_sort Levi, Baruch
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The perceived health status indicator included in the OECD Health Statistics suffers from severe methodological limitations related to data collection. Furthermore, this indicator is also included in the OECD's Better Life Index, thus distorting the total health score of some OECD countries, among them Israel. The purpose of this paper is to explore the erroneous use of OECD health data in Israel and to warn of its implications. METHODS: Analysis of data from the OECD Health Database, Better Life Index and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, review of media reports and governmental documents concerning health measures, conversations and correspondence held with officials in the relevant organizations. RESULTS: OECD's perceived health status outcomes for Israel are biased upwards, resulting also in an upward bias of the Israeli overall health grade in the Better Life Index. This is due to the methodological differences between the OECD's standard survey questionnaire and the Israeli one. Yet, erroneous comparisons constantly appear in governmental documents and media reports, presenting health status in Israel in an excessive positive light. CONCLUSIONS: Data from the OECD Health Statistics and the Better Life Index are reaching policy makers and the public in a manner that potentially distorts professional and political discourse on health. This may lead to a decrease in the resources allocated to health based on a flawed comparison. In the long run, and no less serious, the systematic imprecision may detract from the reliability of authority reports in the eyes of the public. Caution is essential in dealing with health indices and international comparisons. The OECD and relevant national agencies should invest greater efforts in the consolidation of definitions and methodologies.
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spelling pubmed-52373272017-01-18 Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel Levi, Baruch Isr J Health Policy Res Integrative Article BACKGROUND: The perceived health status indicator included in the OECD Health Statistics suffers from severe methodological limitations related to data collection. Furthermore, this indicator is also included in the OECD's Better Life Index, thus distorting the total health score of some OECD countries, among them Israel. The purpose of this paper is to explore the erroneous use of OECD health data in Israel and to warn of its implications. METHODS: Analysis of data from the OECD Health Database, Better Life Index and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, review of media reports and governmental documents concerning health measures, conversations and correspondence held with officials in the relevant organizations. RESULTS: OECD's perceived health status outcomes for Israel are biased upwards, resulting also in an upward bias of the Israeli overall health grade in the Better Life Index. This is due to the methodological differences between the OECD's standard survey questionnaire and the Israeli one. Yet, erroneous comparisons constantly appear in governmental documents and media reports, presenting health status in Israel in an excessive positive light. CONCLUSIONS: Data from the OECD Health Statistics and the Better Life Index are reaching policy makers and the public in a manner that potentially distorts professional and political discourse on health. This may lead to a decrease in the resources allocated to health based on a flawed comparison. In the long run, and no less serious, the systematic imprecision may detract from the reliability of authority reports in the eyes of the public. Caution is essential in dealing with health indices and international comparisons. The OECD and relevant national agencies should invest greater efforts in the consolidation of definitions and methodologies. BioMed Central 2017-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5237327/ /pubmed/28101328 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-016-0128-x Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. 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 Integrative Article
Levi, Baruch
Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel
title Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel
title_full Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel
title_fullStr Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel
title_full_unstemmed Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel
title_short Perceived health status in a comparative perspective: Methodological limitations and policy implications for Israel
title_sort perceived health status in a comparative perspective: methodological limitations and policy implications for israel
topic Integrative Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5237327/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28101328
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-016-0128-x
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