engleski

Can Self-Perceived Health Variables Predict Survival in Old Age?

The subjective nature of person's own health assessments may be of doubtful validity and reliability, but have proven to be significant information not to be discarded. Numerous research results have confirmed that self-assessments of health may be very good predictors of mortality in older people (Idler and Kasl, 1991), and even predict survival in old age better than objective, physician’ s assessments of health (Mossey and Shapiro, 1982). Although subjective health variables provide information on a person's physical status and his/her evaluation of it, self-assessments, or self-perceptions of health get their meaning only in comparison with other age-peer's health or in comparison of a person's current health with his/her previous health. The aim of this research was to investigate whether different self-assessments of health show different prognostic validity in the prediction of survival in old age. The sample consisted of 469 older persons, from Zagreb, 208 (44, 3%) men and 261 (55, 7%) women. The data on their life status (dead/alive) and age were collected after a fifteen year follow-up period. Apart from these, data on other variables were collected: general self-assessment of health, comparison of subject’ s health to that of their age-peers, self-assessments of functional ability and psychosomatic symptoms. Data were analyzed by the survival analysis techniques: the Kaplan-Meier and the Cox model of proportional hazard. Results confirm the association of self-assessed health variables and survival in subjects, except for the functional ability variable. The association shows positive correlations – the better an older person assessed his/her own health, the greater was his/her chance of longer survival. In the Cox regression model of proportional hazard, the variables that significantly predicted survival were psychosomatic symptoms assessments and general self-assessment of health.

self-perceived health; survival; old age

nije evidentirano