Health indicators as a measure of individual health status: public perspectives

Objective: We examined the perspectives of the general public on 29 health indicators to provide evidence for further prioritizing the indicators, which were obtained from the literature review. Health status is different from disease status, which can refer to different stages of cancer. Design: This study uses a cross-sectional design. Setting: An online survey was administered through Ohio University, ResearchMatch, and Clemson University. Participants: Participants included the general public who are 18 years or older. A total of 1153 valid responses were included in the analysis. Primary outcomes measures: Participants rated the importance of the 29 health indicators. The data were aggregated, cleaned, and analyzed in three ways: (1) to determine the agreement among the three samples on the importance of each indicator (IV = the three samples, DV = individual survey responses); (2) to examine the mean differences between the retained indicators with agreement across the three samples (IV = the identified indicators, DV = individual survey responses); and (3) to rank the groups of indicators after grouping the indicators with no mean differences (IV = the groups of indicators, DV = individual survey responses). Results: The descriptive statistics indicate that the top-five rated indicators are drug or substance abuse, smoking or tobacco use, alcohol abuse, major depression, diet and nutrition. The importance of 13 of the 29 health indicators was agreed upon among the three samples. The 13 indicators were categorized into seven groups. Groups 1-3 were rated as significantly higher than Groups 4-7. Conclusions: This study provides a baseline for prioritizing further the 29 health indicators, which can be used by electronic health records or personal health record system developers. Currently, self-rated health status is used predominantly. Our study provides a foundation to track and measure preventive services more accurately and to develop an individual health status index.