The reliability of the Minimum European Health Module.
OBJECTIVE
The Minimum European Health Module (MEHM) consists of 3 global questions concerning 3 health domains: self-perceived health, chronic conditions and long-term activity limitation. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the reliability of the MEHM.


METHODS
Participants of the Belgian Food Consumption Survey were interviewed twice: 170 individuals were selected for the MEHM reliability evaluation. For each of the 3 questions Pearson and Kappa coefficients were estimated. Analyses were stratified by gender, age, education, language and time between the interviews.


RESULTS
The Pearson correlations are between 0.73 and 0.81. The Kappa estimates are good or excellent: 0.74 (self-perceived health), 0.77 (chronic conditions) and 0.68 (activity limitation). Also stratified analyses indicated in general an acceptable reliability.


CONCLUSIONS
The MEHM has an acceptable reliability.
Cox
Bianca
B
Unit of Epidemiology, Scientific Institute of Public Health, J Wytsmanstraat 14, 1050, Brussels, Belgium. b.cox@iph.fgov.be
van Oyen
Herman
H
Cambois
Emmanuelle
E
Jagger
Carol
C
le Roy
Sophie
S
Robine
Jean-Marie
JM
Romieu
Isabelle
I
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001530:Belgium; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D055815:Young Adult