[A disease substitution index: construction and validation]

Empirical research dealing with health and illness often has the problem that the data sets contain a variety of health related variables but no variables abou the appearance of diseases and complaints. In order to solve this problem a disease substitution index (DSI) based on data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP, 1985) and the national health survey conducted in the framework of the German Cardiovascular Prevention Study (GCP, 1984-1986) was constructed. Consisting of the variables "medical attendance", "hospital attendance" "existence of chronical diseases" the DSI shows statistically significant association with a series of diseases and complaints. These findings indicate that the DSI can be used to substitute diseases and/or complaints in datasets with the mentioned variables but no informations about diseases or complaints.