Did we forget the frail people? The impact of study design on estimated differences in health within and across European countries
Description: Population surveys are important tools for both researchers and policy makers to gather information on health and living conditions in the population. However, inconsistent findings regarding older people’s health have been reported, both within and between countries. The overall aim of this postdoc project is to contribute to the development of better methods to obtain comparable estimates of older people’s health.The aim of my thesis was to investigate a) the characteristics of individuals at risk of being underrepresented in population surveys, b) the systematic errors that arise as a consequence of this underrepresentation, and c) if these systematic errors can be minimized by weighting-adjustments.The results - based on Swedish data - shows the magnitude of bias that may arise due to systematic underrepresentation of women, older age groups, people with low socioeconomic status, and people with poor health and function. In addition to underestimated prevalence rates of poor health (which is difficult to adjust for by weighting adjustments), health problems of less privileged groups tend to be underestimated in relation to the more privileged groups. According to the results, the fundamental associations between education and health might be underestimated or even undetected.The postdoc-project builds on key results of the thesis: The importance of including people in institutions, the use of indirect interviews (interview with e.g. family member when the elderly person is unable to participate) and the effect of non-response. More specifically, the aim is to investigate if differences in study design can be one of the explanations to the varying and inconsistent results of health estimates among older people, and to give empirical evidence and information to improve the estimation methods.Analyses will include official statistics and three different population studies (EU-SILC, SHARE, SWEOLD) from 11 European countries.
Amount: SEK 1,600,000
Funding type: grant
Funder scheme: Unclassified
Start date: 2018-01-01
End date: 2019-12-31
Investigator: Susanne Kelfve
Institution: Linköping University
Funded outputs count: 1
Funder award ID: 2017-01456
OpenAlex ID: G6026553507