Self-rated health as a measure of health status among people with chronic illness in an Urban area of South India.

ABSTRACT

Background: Rising burden of chronic illnesses across the globe necessitates the assessment of needs of persons suffering from these illnesses. Self-rated health has been found to be a valid and reliable tool in population health surveys. Material and methods: A cross-sectional study using modified cluster sampling technique was undertaken in the urban field practice area of M S Ramaiah Medical College, Bangalore. A semi-structured pre-tested questionnaire was used for data collection, which was done by interview method through house-house visits. Self- rated health was assessed using a 5-point scale ranging from Very Good -Good –Fair- Poor- Very poor. This rating was crosschecked by an assessment by the investigator. Descriptive statistics and factor analysis were used for the purpose of analysis of data and weighted kappa statistic was used to test agreement between self-rated health and health assessed by investigator. Results and Conclusions: Overall prevalence of chronic illness in the study population was 10.0% and significant difference was observed between males and females. In the study population, 72.0% (293) rated their health as fair. 13.0% rated their health as poor while the investigator assessed the health status of the study pop-ulation as fair in 72.0% of the study population and as poor in 4.9% of the study population. Weighted Kappa statistic showed 33% agreement between the two ratings. Factor analysis of 32 variables included in the study explained 67% of the total variance. Principal component analysis of these factors yielded 12 factors of which 3 were considered major depending on the number of variables included and percentage variance explained by that factor. Major factor 1 contained 11 variables including self-rated health and explained 14.3% of the variance, which signifies the role of self-rated health as a measure of health status.