Do health interview surveys yield reliable data on chronic illness among older respondents?

Previous research evaluating quality of health interview survey data has ge nerally relied upon comparisons of household interview data with medical re cords or other external sources of information. However, "gold standards" a re not always satisfactory or available, This paper illustrates an alternat ive approach to the evaluation of data quality-examination of the reliabili ty of reports of chronic conditions in longitudinal surveys. The data come from national samples of older Americans (First National Health and Nutriti on Examination Survey Epidemiologic Followup Study, 1971-1975, 1982-1984, 1 986) and older Taiwanese (Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly , 1989, 1993, 1996), The results show that, among respondents who reported a chronic condition at a given interview, the likelihood that the condition was acknowledged at the subsequent interview was higher for hypertension a nd diabetes than for arthritis and stroke. Low levels of consistency for st roke appear to result partly from the poor wording of questions. In Taiwan, younger, more educated persons and those experiencing severe conditions we re somewhat more likely to acknowledge the condition at follow-up compared with their respective counterparts, Women and persons of high cognitive sta tus in the United States and respondents in both countries who used a proxy to report the occurrence of a stroke were also more likely to acknowledge conditions at follow-up.