Self-Rated Health as a Research Artefact

10 Pages Posted: 10 Nov 2014 Last revised: 27 May 2017

See all articles by Radim Tobolka

Radim Tobolka

State Institute for Drug Control

Date Written: November 9, 2014

Abstract

This paper argues that self-rated health, a widely used predictor of mortality, is a research artefact which came into being through unacknowledged biomedicalization of the concept of health on the part of the research community. The statistical correlation between self-rated health and mortality is a culture-specific coincidence that is caused by a human ability to accurately assess one’s life expectancy as compared to one’s peers. In lay theories of health that are strongly influenced by Western biomedicine, health and death are closely related: the worse one’s health, the shorter one’s life. Therefore, in these populations, self-rated health implicitly contains one’s estimate of how long one will live. However, self-rated life expectancy that predicts actual mortality can be obtained just as well via a direct question without any reference to health, thus making the self-rated health as an analytical tool redundant. In ethno-cultural groups whose lay theories of health are affected by biomedicine to a limited extent or not at all, the relationship between self-rated health and death is much looser or qualitatively different and the predictive power of self-rated health significantly lower or non-existent. The argument draws on findings of comparative social science (sociology, anthropology) and STS (Science and Technology Studies).

Keywords: self-rated health, biomedicine, biomedicalization

Suggested Citation

Tobolka, Radim, Self-Rated Health as a Research Artefact (November 9, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2521094 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2521094

Radim Tobolka (Contact Author)

State Institute for Drug Control ( email )

Srobarova 38
Praha, 10041
Czech Republic

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