The aim of this study was to assess the test-retest reliability of a measur
e of perceived general health by sex and age. The study analyzed data from
the nationally representative Mini-Finland Health Survey of 8000 adults age
d 30 and over. The subjects were invited to attend a personal health interv
iew and a health examination in 1978-1980. Altogether 7217 persons particip
ated. Perceived general health was measured at the personal health intervie
w and in the self-administered questionnaire 1-6 weeks apart. The identical
questions were: how would you assess your current health? The response alt
ernatives were good, fairly good, intermediate, fairly poor, poor and canno
t say. This study showed that among men and women unweighted agreement of t
he 'good-intermediate-poor' categorization of perceived health was around 7
0% and unweighted kappa-values were around 0.5. Only in the oldest age-grou
p (75 +) reliability declined below these levels. The fair or good reliabil
ity of perceived health observed in this study gives additional confidence
for using this general measure of overall health status in future research.
(C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.