Self and Age Differences in Defining Health Situations

The purpose of this research is to examine how individuals evaluate bodily and medical concerns and define health situations. Responses to a fixed-response health-rating question and an open-ended question probing personal problems are compared and predicted with a set of health status indicators including measures of functional limitations and morbidity. Activity limitation is the strongest predictor of each measure among this national sample of adults (N = 3,497). Age is associated with poorer rated health and more defined health problems in most of the adult years, but this trend is reversed in older ages. Despite higher morbidity and functional limitations among African American women, they were less likely than other respondents to define their health as problematic. In addition, evaluative components of the self such as self-esteem influence ratings of health but not health problem definitions. The findings confirm the overall utility of the self-assessed health as a reliable estimate of current health status and suggest that spontaneously mentioning health problems reflects current as well as future health concerns.