THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SELF-RATED HEALTH AND KEY INDICATORS OF HEALTH IN AN OLDER POPULATION: ANALYSIS OF THE CANADIAN LONGITUDINAL STUDY ON AGING

Abstract

Self-sated health (SRH) is a global indicator of health which reflects a person’s integrated perception of their own health. To obtain an in depth understanding of SRH, this study examined the association between SRH and key indicators of health in particular measures of physical health, psycho-social, health behaviours and clinical health measure. This population-based sample was comprised of 51,338 men and women aged 45-85 years from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) and included both tracking and comprehensive cohorts. Ordinal logistic regression models assessed odds ratios and confidence intervals and estimated the association between SRH and key objective and subjective indicators of health. Fully adjusted model revealed that SRH has statistically significant association with numerous health measures in particular measures of physical, cognition, depression and clinical health measures. SRH has the ability not only to reflect physical, psycho-social and health behaviours but also it accounts for clinical health measures.