Essay On Self-Measured Health

Self-Rated Health
Items measuring self-rated health are frequently found in surveys of many kinds. An example is a question asking respondents to characterize their overall state of health using categories such as excellent, good, fair, or poor. Such evaluations may or may not correspond to that which would be provided by a physician.
The person-centeredness of such questions make them extremely useful for a number of purposes in health research. First, self-related health is used in measures of health, psychological well-being, and health-related quality of life, concepts that are usually ill-defined but nearly always include some element of physical well-being and functioning. These are matters for which the individual is certainly the best source of information. Second, self-rated health can be used as a screening tool to identify high-risk groups and risk factors; poor self-rated health is consistently associated with low socioeconomic status and high levels of other illness risk factors in both national and international studies. Third, self-rated health can be used as an outcome in the evaluation of medical interventions as an important addition to the usual mortality and morbidity outcomes; treatments with similar effects on length of life may have different implications with respect to the quality of those years. Fourth, self-rated health can be used as a predictor of illness behavior, retirement, or the long-term use of medication and other health care services; studies of
Functional disability is uniquely common among older persons, and there is substantial potential for its prevention. Age-related increases in physical and cognitive disability are often a direct result of chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, stroke, vascular disease, arthritis,