%0 Journal Article %J Disabil Rehabil %D 1999 %T Measuring disability with parsimony. %A Verbrugge, Lois M. %A Merrill, Susan S. %A Xian Li %K Activities of Daily Living %K Disability Evaluation %K Disabled Persons %K Health Status Indicators %K Health Surveys %K Humans %K Surveys and Questionnaires %X

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Health surveys, especially those for older persons, include numerous detailed items about disability. There has been little effort to develop a global disability item, that is, one question that covers the concept of disability briefly but well. This article discusses how parsimony can be achieved through a single item, or less desirably by reductions of detailed items.

MAIN OUTCOME AND RESULTS: Results of three analyses on the issue of compact disability indicators, using public-use data sets (AHEAD, HRS, BRFSS), are presented. The analyses study relationships of global disability to both detailed disability items and global health. Overall, the results show that a global disability item has good coverage of specific disabilities and is distinct from self-rated health.

CONCLUSIONS: Routine inclusion of a global disability item in surveys is recommended, and specific suggestions are made to aid its design.

%B Disabil Rehabil %I 21 %V 21 %P 295-306 %8 1999 May-Jun %G eng %U https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10381242 %N 5-6 %L pubs_1999_Verbrugge_LDis.pdf %1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10381242?dopt=Abstract %4 disability/disability %$ 11792 %R 10.1080/096382899297729