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Slide 1

Quality assessment of MEHM in Quality assessment of MEHM in

SILCSILC

Eurostat Unit F5 “Health and Food Safety Statistics”

3rd meeting of the Task Force on Health ExpectanciesLuxembourg, 12 December 2006

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Slide 2

The Minimum European Health Module (MEHM)

MEHM used in:

EU-SILC –> list of variables

European Health Status Module (EHSM) of the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) –> questions with conceptual cards

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Slide 3

MEHM in EU-SILC Health, including health status and chronic

illness or condition

General healthVery good/Good/Fair/Bad/Very bad

Suffer from any chronic (long-standing) illness or condition

Yes/No

Limitation in activities people usually do because of health problems for at least the last 6 months

Yes, strongly limited/Yes, limited/No, not limited

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Slide 4

MEHM in EHSM

Questions originally developed in English

Translation protocol for other languages

Eurostat grants and Transition Facility/Phare

projects for preparing national linguistic versions

following the translation protocol and testing

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Slide 5

Eurostat actions in 2005-2006:

MEHM questions used in national SILC

questionnaires collected from MS

Letter sent to the HIS experts in MS, involved in

the project of the EHSM translation for checking

the wording of the MEHM questions in SILC and

identify any problem

Analysis of the comments received from MS

(12 MS + NO)

Quality assessment of MEHM in EU-SILC

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Slide 6

Quality assessment of MEHM in EU-SILC

Some deviations from the English version of the

MEHM as proposed for EHSM are noted in few

countries in the SILC questionnaire; but in some

cases SILC version appears to be better for some

variables or answer categories, in practice mainly

for the first question on general health.

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Slide 7

Some examples of deviations:Self-perceived health: different scale used

(“good” is the highest level)Chronic (longstanding) illness: use of the

word “handicap”; either “long standing illness” or “condition” is not always translated; adding “including seasonal or intermittent occurrences”;

Limitation in activities because of health problems: 3rd MEHM question filtered by the 2nd question; “for at least the past 6 months” or “at least” not always included in the question; splitting the question in 2 questions

Quality assessment of MEHM in EU-SILC

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Slide 8

The idea is to define in each language a final

correct version of the MEHM and to use it both in

SILC and EHSM

The final English version of the EHIS, including the

MEHM, was adopted by the Working Group on Public

Health Statistics in November 2006

All other linguistic versions have to be adapted

accordingly, before coming back to the SILC and

requiring for the harmonisation.

Quality assessment of MEHM in EU-SILC