Bollen Kenneth A, Gutin Iliya, Halpern Carolyn T, Harris Kathleen M
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; Carolina Population Center, USA.
Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; Carolina Population Center, USA.
Soc Sci Res. 2021 May;96:102538. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2021.102538. Epub 2021 Feb 16.
Self-rated health (SRH) is one of the most important social science measures of health. Yet its measurement properties remain poorly understood. Most studies ignore the measurement error in SRH despite the bias resulting from even random measurement error. Our goal is to estimate the measurement reliability of SRH in contemporaneous, retrospective, and proxy indicators. We use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to estimate the reliability of SRH relative to proxy assessments and respondents' recollections of past health. Even the best indicators - contemporaneous self-reports - have a modest reliability of ~0.6; retrospective and proxy assessments fare much worse, with reliability less than 0.2. Moreover, not correcting for measurement error in SRH leads to a ~20-40% reduction in its correlation with other measures of health. Researchers should be skeptical of analyses that treat these subjective reports as explanatory variables and fail to take account of their substantial measurement error.
自评健康状况（SRH）是健康领域最重要的社会科学衡量指标之一。然而，其测量属性仍未得到充分理解。尽管随机测量误差会导致偏差，但大多数研究都忽略了SRH中的测量误差。我们的目标是估计SRH在同期、回顾性和代理指标中的测量可靠性。我们利用全国青少年到成人健康纵向研究来估计SRH相对于代理评估和受访者对过去健康状况回忆的可靠性。即使是最好的指标——同期自我报告——也只有适度的可靠性，约为0.6；回顾性和代理评估的表现则差得多，可靠性低于0.2。此外，不校正SRH中的测量误差会导致其与其他健康指标的相关性降低约20%-40%。研究人员应质疑那些将这些主观报告视为解释变量且未考虑其大量测量误差的分析。
