Vignettes and differential health reporting: results from the Japanese World Health Survey

• Published in: Cadernos de saúde pública Vol. 33; no. 7; p. e00091216
• Main Authors: Tareque, Md Ismail, Ikeda, Nayu, Koshio, Atsushi, Hasegawa, Toshihiko
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Portuguese
• Published: Brazil Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz 07.08.2017; Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz
• Subjects: Adult; Age Factors; Aged; Clinical Decision-Making - methods; Consumer Health Information; Female; Health Promotion; Health Status Indicators; Health Surveys; Humans; Japan; Male; Middle Aged; PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH; Reference Standards; Regression Analysis; Reproducibility of Results; Self Report - standards; Severity of Illness Index; Sex Factors; Promoção da Saúde; Encuestas Epidemiológicas; Health Promotion; Promoción de la Salud; Health Surveys; Inquéritos Epidemiológicos; Información de Salud al Consumidor; Consumer Health Information; Informação de Saúde ao Consumidor
• ISSN: 0102-311X; 1678-4464; 1678-4464; 0102-311X
• DOI: 10.1590/0102-311X00091216

We examined the factors associated with the evaluation of health description vignettes and how Japanese people make decisions related to the eight health dimensions (mobility, emotions, pain, relationship with others, sleep and energy, vision, recognition/remembering abilities, and self-care). We investigated a dataset of 4,959 respondents (≥ 18 years) from the Japanese World Health Survey. Ordered probit models were used to identify factors associated with all health dimensions. On all dimensions, older people appraised extreme problems as less problematic than young people did. Compared with men, women reported greater severity in the case of extreme problems on three health dimensions: emotion, pain, and sleep/energy. The study also found negative effects of alcohol consumption in almost all dimensions. Doctors and other health care workers should be careful when assessing severity of health problems in older individuals; in this population, health problems may be more severe than reported.