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  • AJHE paper Re-submission 15 Sept 2014 FINAL

    Rights statement: Inflated Responses in Measures of Self-Assessed Health William H. Greene, Mark N. Harris, and Bruce Hollingsworth American Journal of Health Economics 2015 1:4, 461-493 © 2015 The MIT Press

    Accepted author manuscript, 1.02 MB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Inflated responses in measures of self-assessed health

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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2015
<mark>Journal</mark>American Journal of Health Economics
Issue number4
Volume1
Number of pages33
Pages (from-to)461-493
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date16/10/15
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This paper focuses on the self-reported responses given to survey questions of the form “Overall, how would you rate your health?” with typical response items being on a scale ranging from poor to excellent. Usually, the overwhelming majority of responses fall in either the middle category or the one immediately to the “right” of this (for example, good and very good). However, based on a wide range of other medical indicators, such favorable responses appear to paint an overly rosy picture of true health. The hypothesis here is that these “middle” responses have been, in some sense, inflated. That is, for whatever reason, a significant number of responders inaccurately report into these categories. Our results do indeed suggest that such inflation is present in these categories. Adjusted responses to these questions could lead to significant changes in policy, and should be reflected upon when analyzing and interpreting these scales.

Bibliographic note

Inflated Responses in Measures of Self-Assessed Health William H. Greene, Mark N. Harris, and Bruce Hollingsworth American Journal of Health Economics 2015 1:4, 461-493 © 2015 The MIT Press