Schnohr Christina W, Gobina Inese, Santos Teresa, Mazur Joanna, Alikasifuglu Mujgan, Välimaa Raili, Corell Maria, Hagquist Curt, Dalmasso Paola, Movseyan Yeva, Cavallo Franco, van Dorsselaer Saskia, Torsheim Torbjørn
Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, P. O. Box 2099, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Riga Stradins University, Riga, Latvia.
Health Qual Life Outcomes. 2016 May 4;14:70. doi: 10.1186/s12955-016-0469-8.
The Health Behavior in School-aged Children is a cross-national study collecting data on social and health indicators on adolescents in 43 countries. The study provides comparable data on health behaviors and health outcomes through the use of a common protocol, which have been a back bone of the study sine its initiation in 1983. Recent years, researchers within the study have noticed a questionable comparability on the widely used item on self-rated health. One of the four response categories to the item "Would you say your health is….?" showed particular variation, as the response category "Fair" varied from 20 % in Latvia and Moldova to 3-4 % in Bulgaria and Macedonia. A qualitative mini-survey of the back-translations showed that the response category "Fair" had a negative slant in 25 countries, a positive slant in 10 countries and was considered neutral in 9 countries. This finding indicates that there are what may be called semantic issues affecting comparability in international studies, since the same original word (in an English original) is interpreted differently across countries and cultures. The paper test and discuss a few possible explanations to this, however, only leaving to future studies to hold a cautious approach to international comparisons if working with the self-rated health item with four response categories.
《学龄儿童健康行为》是一项跨国研究，收集了43个国家青少年的社会和健康指标数据。该研究通过使用通用方案提供了关于健康行为和健康结果的可比数据，自1983年启动以来，这些数据一直是该研究的支柱。近年来，该研究的研究人员注意到，在广泛使用的自评健康项目上存在可疑的可比性。对于“你会说你的健康状况是……？”这一问题的四个回答类别之一表现出特别的差异，因为“一般”这一回答类别在拉脱维亚和摩尔多瓦为20%，而在保加利亚和马其顿为3%-4%。对回译进行的定性小型调查显示，“一般”这一回答类别在25个国家有负面倾向，在10个国家有正面倾向，在9个国家被视为中性。这一发现表明，存在一些可能被称为语义问题的情况，影响了国际研究中的可比性，因为同一个原始单词（英文原文）在不同国家和文化中有不同的解释。本文测试并讨论了对此的一些可能解释，然而，如果使用有四个回答类别的自评健康项目进行国际比较，只能留待未来的研究采取谨慎的方法。
