What do time-use patterns tell us about the validity of self-reported health?

• Príomhchruthaitheoirí: Marco Faytong-Haro (Údar), Alexis R. Santos-Lozada (Údar)
• Formáid: LEABHAR
• Foilsithe / Cruthaithe: Elsevier, 2021-09-01T00:00:00Z.
• Ábhair: article
• Rochtain ar líne: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 2352-8273; 10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100882
• Keywords: Self-reported health; Time use; Race/ethnicity; United States; Validation; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Social sciences (General); H1-99
• Source: SSM: Population Health, Vol 15, Iss , Pp 100882- (2021)

Objective: This short communication investigates the usefulness of time-use measures to validate subjective health measures such as self-reported health (SRH). It does this by examining time-use patterns and SRH among middle-age adults in the United States distinguished by race/ethnicity and with additional attention to differences in responses based on language of interview for Hispanics. Methods: Data for this study come from the 2013-2016 American Time Use Survey. We calculated average time-use for personal care; housework; paid work; leisure; volunteering/travel; caregiving; and education for every racial/ethnic group differentiating by SRH for 27,063 adults aged 25-64 years. A series of ANOVAs were computed to assess differences in time-use by SRH. Results: Non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic Blacks who reported poor/fair SRH spent more time in personal care and leisure, and less time in paid work, volunteering/travel, caregiving and education, in comparison to those who reported Excellent/Very Good/Good SRH. Among Hispanics, differences by SRH were found for personal care, paid work, leisure and volunteering/travel. Hispanics who answered in English displayed partially similar patterns in SRH found for non-Hispanic whites and Blacks. Hispanics who answered in Spanish demonstrated differences in SRH in the areas of paid work, leisure and education, diverging from the other groups. Conclusions: Time-use differences by health status are consistent between non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, but not so for Hispanics. To some extent, Hispanics who answered in English have more comparable patterns to non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic Blacks than Spanish respondents. Caution should be exercised when self-reported health measures are used to compare diverse samples collected with surveys that are administered in different languages.