Reporting biases in self-assessed physical and cognitive health status of older Europeans.

Reporting biases in self-assessed physical and cognitive health status of older Europeans.

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This paper explores which demographic characteristics substantially bias self-reported physical and cognitive health status of older Europeans.The analysis utilises micro-data for 19 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to compare performance-tested outcomes of mobility click here and memory with their self-reported equivalents.Relative importance analysis based on multinomial logistic regressions shows that the bias in self-reported health is mostly due to reporting heterogeneities between countries and age groups, whereas gender contributes little to the discrepancy.Concordance of mobility and cognition measures is highly related; however, differences in reporting behaviour due to education and cultural background have a larger impact on self-assessed memory than on self-assessed mobility.Southern as well as Central and Eastern Europeans are much more likely to misreport their physical and cognitive abilities Sneakers for Men - Grey - Canvas Mesh Athletic Running Shoes than Northern and Western Europeans.

Overall, our results suggest that comparisons of self-reported health between countries and age groups are prone to significant biases, whereas comparisons between genders are credible for most European countries.These findings are crucial given that self-assessed data are often the only information available to researchers and policymakers when asking health-related questions.