External validation of the use of vignettes in cross-country health studies

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in External Validation of the Use of Vignettes in Cross-Country Health StudiesNabanita Datta Gupta Nicolai Kristensen Dario Pozzoli The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Cross-country comparisons of subjective assessments are rendered difficult if not impossible because of sub-population specific response style. To correct for this, the use of vignettes has become increasingly popular, notably within cross-country health studies. However, the validity of vignettes as a means to re-scale across sample populations critically rests on the assumption of "response consistency" (RC): that vignettes and self-assessments are evaluated on the same scale. In this paper, we seek to test this assumption by applying objective measures of health along with subjective measures and vignettes. Our results indicate that the assumption of RC is not innocuous and that our extended model relaxing this assumption improves the fit and significantly changes the cross-country rankings of health vis-à-vis the standard Chopit model. JEL Classification: C25, I10

Using Anchoring Vignettes to Assess Group Differences in General Self-Rated Health

“…The lack of a significant effect of age on SRH is surprising, though consistent with—indeed, caused by—the earlier finding that older respondents are more health-pessimistic (and so have self-ratings adjusted upwards by chopit). Datta Gupta, Kristensen, and Pozzoli (2010), analyzing disability vignettes, report very similar findings, which they show result from age-related response in consistency—the failure of respondents to treat vignette characters as age peers. Our vignettes appear to suffer the same problem (a possibility supported by survey audio recordings in which respondents ask the vignette characters’ ages) 8.…”

Education-related inequity in healthcare with heterogeneous reporting of health

“…On vignette equivalence, see Murray et al (2003), Kristensen and Johansson (2008), Bago d’Uva et al (2011) and Rice et al (2011). On response consistency, see van Soest et al (2011), Bago d’Uva et al (2011) and Datta Gupta et al (2010).…”

Use of anchoring vignettes to evaluate health reporting behavior amongst adults aged 50 years and above in Africa and Asia – testing assumptions

“…Evidence from earlier studies, all from Europe or the United States, has been mixed. Some studies have shown violation of these assumptions (27, 28), while others have shown adherence to these assumptions (9, 20, 21). The lack of adherence to assumptions in our study could be because individuals or groups of individuals understood vignettes differently and/or used different thresholds in rating vignettes and their own disability in mobility and cognition.…”