Morbidity Levels and Differentials in African Adult Females: Self-Report and Objectively Assessed Measures Compared

Allan G. Hill, Harvard University
Richard M.K. Adanu, University of Ghana
Rudolph Darko, Ghana Medical School
Richard Biritwum, Ghana Medical School
Rosemary B. Duda, Harvard Medical School

In two waves of a large panel survey on women’s health, we included a battery of self-reported health questions in each of the two rounds. In the paper, we first examine the consistency of the self-reported health status data, comparing scores on the 8 domains of the Short-Form 36 (SF-36) with other self-reported health measures such as pain and discomfort, recent medical consultations and problems and other organ- or disease-specific questions from both waves of the study. Then, these aggregate measures of health are compared with the medical results both from the examination data (Wave 1) and the biological measurements. Patterns of consistency are examined by condition or domain, by age, by selected socio-economic variables (education and wealth) and by previous illness history. Finally, the consistency of the reporting of health status is examined for the two waves of the study for individual women.