A cross-cultural comparison of health status values

The extent to which the values attached to health states are similar in different cultures or social groups is important for understanding health and illness behaviors and for developing standardized health status measures. A cross-cultural study was conducted to compare the health status values obtained in a United States population (Seattle, Washington) with those from another English-speaking culture (London, England) on the Sickness Impact Profile, a standardized measure composed of 136 items. London judges rated the severity of dysfunction described in each item on an equal interval scale using the same methods of scaling and analysis employed in the Seattle study. A regression of English mean item values on US mean values yielded a slope of 1.00 and an intercept of -0.07, indicating that judges gave strikingly similar ratings to most items. Agreement was higher at the more severe end of the dysfunction continuum than at the least severe end, a finding consistent with the notion that what constitutes health is more difficult to define than what constitutes illness. While a universal conception of dysfunction may exist in English-speaking societies, the social and cultural determinants of health status values deserve more systematic study.