How do respondents understand survey questions on ill-health?

Survey research examining the prevalence of ill-health frequently use globa l single-item questions such as on long standing illness often combined wit h an inquiry about the consequences of ill-health in everyday life. These k inds of questions appear to tap a response with face validity and comparabi lity. However, a survey interview is also an interactional event and the wa y the respondents understand the meaning of questions is important. The pur pose of this study is to explore how the meaning of survey questions on lon g-standing illness and restrictions posed by it are understood by responden ts. Qualitative interview data collected from a subgroup of 42 participants in a nation wide 1994 Finnish Survey on Living Conditions is used. This st udy is based on qualitative content analysis of verbatim transcripts of the se semi-structured interviews. Two relevant aspects of ill-health were dist inguished: 'disease' and 'illness'. Only medically diagnosed chronic diseas es were considered long-standing illnesses by the respondents. Experienced, non-diagnosed illnesses were, rather, considered 'normal', i.e. consequenc es of ageing or the life situation or too insignificant to be considered lo ng-standing illnesses. Whether long-standing illness was assessed as restri cting everyday life was relative not only to the severity of the disease an d the life situation of the respondents but also to adaptation to ill healt h. The results suggest that the survey question on long-standing illness ca ptures people's sense of chronic disease rather than the 'illness, infirmit y or disability' the wording of the question suggests.