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Measuring disability with parsimony
L M Verbrugge1, S S Merrill, X Liu
1Institute of Gerontology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-2007, USA. verbrugg@umich.edu
Primary Objective:
Health surveys, especially those for older persons, include numerous detailed items about disability. There has been little effort to develop a global disability item, that is, one question that covers the concept of disability briefly but well. This article discusses how parsimony can be achieved through a single item, or less desirably by reductions of detailed items.
Main Outcome And Results:
Results of three analyses on the issue of compact disability indicators, using public-use data sets (AHEAD, HRS, BRFSS), are presented. The analyses study relationships of global disability to both detailed disability items and global health. Overall, the results show that a global disability item has good coverage of specific disabilities and is distinct from self-rated health.
Conclusions:
Routine inclusion of a global disability item in surveys is recommended, and specific suggestions are made to aid its design.
