Observer ratings of health and sickness: Can other people tell us anything about our health that we don't already know?

Abstract

After administering interviews covering health conditions, physical limitations, optimism, and affect to 851 older adults, interviewers rated the health and sickness of the interviewees. Observers' ratings of health and sickness were more highly correlated with the severity of participants' self-reported health conditions than were participants' self-ratings of health. This finding is likely attributable to participants' self-ratings of health being more highly correlated with their optimism and positive affect than the observers' ratings. Participants rated as sicker and less healthy at baseline were at a 3 times greater risk for mortality over 114 months. This association was independent of participants' self-rated health as well as demographics, self-reported health conditions, years of smoking, physical limitations, body mass index, optimism, and affect.

Separating gains and losses in health when calculating the minimum important difference for mapped utility measures

“…Although this literature is relatively new and, therefore, limited, several studies have demonstrated that self-ratings of health may be subject to optimism and positive effect [26,27]. In one study, the observer ratings of subjects' health and sickness exhibited a stronger association with all-cause mortality than self-ratings of health [26].…”

Self-rated health and interviewer-rated health: differentials in predictive power for mortality among subgroups of Chinese elders

“…This is not a surprise. Compared to SRH, evaluation by interviewer could be less affected by subjective factors (Todd and Goldman, 2013) and thus may have some advantages over SRH (Brissette, Leventhal, and Leventhal, 2003). Because interviewers usually rate respondents' health at the end of the interview, which is the practice in the CLHLS, interviewers can incorporate information on a respondent's reported health and health-related conditions and information from their own observations while communicating with respondents.…”

“…This is because interviewers may incorporate respondents' reported health information into evaluation when such an assessment is performed at the end of interview (Feng, Zhu, Zhen et al, 2016), and because interviewers' assessments are also susceptible to subjectivity (Brissette, Leventhal, and Leventhal, 2003;Feng, Zhu, Zhen et al, 2016). Some research has indeed shown that factors such as respondents' socioeconomic status affect not only SRH, but also affect physicians' and interviewers' reporting of health outcomes (Smith and Goldman, 2011).…”

“…According to these studies, the use of interviewer-rated health (IRH) may have some advantages over SRH in capturing health situations and may complement the routine use of SRH. For example, unlike SRH, IRH avoids person-specific biases from the respondent, applies a sound comparative framework for judgment based on multiple respondents, incorporates good on-site observations about living conditions and environment, and often takes advantage of the evaluation of SRH from the respondent (Brissette, Leventhal, and Leventhal, 2003;Feng, Zhu, Zhen et al, 2016).…”

The Relationships Between Self-Rated Health and Serum Lipids Across Time

“…Considerable research attention has been directed toward understanding the information people incorporate into their self-ratings of health (e.g., [4,5]). Following this research strand, a plausible explanation of the expected prediction of lipids by SRH is that people, when asked for a global evaluation of their health, take into consideration their own health behaviors, including dietary behavior that could lead to subsequent lipid elevations [47].…”