ESS Slide 1 Quality assessment of MEHM in SILC Eurostat Unit F5 “Health and Food Safety Statistics” 3 rd meeting of the Task Force on Health Expectancies Luxembourg, 12 December 2006

ESS 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

ESS Slide 3 MEHM in EU-SILC  Health, including health status and chronic illness or condition General health Very 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

ESS 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

ESS Slide 5  Eurostat actions in : 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

ESS 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.

ESS 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: 3 rd MEHM question filtered by the 2 nd 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

ESS 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