Gd. Mishra et al., The measurement of socio-economic status: Investigation of gender-and age-specific indicators in Australia: National Health Survey 1995, SOCIAL IND, 56(1), 2001, pp. 73-89
Objective: To investigate the correlations between age- and gender-specific
measures of socio-economic status versus health status as measured by the
SF-36.
Design: Population based study.
Participants: 38187 people aged between 18 to 79 years who participated in
the National Health Survey in 1995.
Results: Factor analysis produced consistent results that were interpreted
in terms of five conceptually meaningful domains (employment, housing, migr
ation, family unit and education). The relative rank of the factors differs
between groups and in some cases factor composition requires items to be a
dded or deleted from the conceptual domains.
Conclusions: Age- and gender-specific SES scores based on these factors had
stronger associations with the physical and mental components of SF-36 tha
n either an area based index or scores derived from males aged 40-44 years.
Overall the results supported the hypothesis that SES measures composed of
social and demographic items exhibit important age- and gender-specific di
fferences which are relevant for health.