Measuring disability with parsimony.
OBJECTIVE
Health surveys, especially those for older persons, include numerous detailed items about disability. There has been little effort to develop a global disability item, that is, one question that covers the concept of disability briefly but well. This article discusses how parsimony can be achieved through a single item, or less desirably by reductions of detailed items.


RESULTS
Results of three analyses on the issue of compact disability indicators, using public-use data sets (AHEAD, HRS, BRFSS), are presented. The analyses study relationships of global disability to both detailed disability items and global health. Overall, the results show that a global disability item has good coverage of specific disabilities and is distinct from self-rated health.


CONCLUSIONS
Routine inclusion of a global disability item in surveys is recommended, and specific suggestions are made to aid its design.
Verbrugge
L M
LM
Institute of Gerontology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-2007, USA. verbrugg@umich.edu
Merrill
S S
SS
Liu
X
X
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires