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The Use of Health Transition Item in Health Inequalities Research: Annual Health Perception Variation Value (AHVV)

Erhan Eser, Müjde Şerifhan, Pınar Baysan, Gökben Yaslı, Pınar Dündar and Ziya Aras

Purpose: The introduction of the “Annual Health Perception Variation Value (AHVV)” that is developed by using Health Transition Item. Methods: The sample size of this representative study is 3397 (38.6% male) with a mean age of 35.7 ± 22.5 years. The AHVV is developed by means of selfevaluated Health Transition Item of the SF-36 scale. AHVV is calculated for each of the 5 years age groups. The percentages of the positive responses are summed up and then subtracted from the sum of the percentages of the negative responses such as: AHVV= [(Much Better % + Somewhat Better %)] – [(Somewhat Worse % + Worse %)]. Fort he sake of making comparison with AHVV, “Current Self Rated Health Value (SRHV) is also derived from a SRH question, calculated by a similar methodology. Results: Regardless of having any chronic illness, both SRHV and AHVV worsen as a person gets older and gets poorer. AHVV is affected by age (ß=0.36) more that that of SRHV (ß=0.08) whereas SRHV variance can be better explained by income level (ß =0.18) than AHVV (ß =0.05) in the multiple linear regression analyses. A significant linear trend in the mean AHV was observed by SRH categories. Conclusion: AHVV can be regarded as a new population level parametric summary health transition index which can be used in health inequality research