A study on the equity of self-rated health of older adults at the family level

Ren, Weicun; Xing, Yiqing; Tarimo, Clifford Silver; He, Ruibo; Liang, Zhang

doi:10.1186/s12939-023-01895-6

International Journal for Equity in Health

Table 1 The meaning and assigned value of indicators

From: A study on the equity of self-rated health of older adults at the family level

Variable category	First-level indicators	Secondary indicators	Meaning	Assigned value
Independent variables	Basic family information	Number of family people	The total number of people living in the family	Number
		Medical service institution	The type of medical service institution closest to the family’s residence	1-5^a
		Distance	The distance to the nearest medical service institution	Distance (KM)
		Travel time	The time it takes to get to the nearest medical service provider using the most commonly used means of transportation	Time (Minutes)
		Family income	Yearly total family income	Yuan/year
		Medical and health expenditure	Yearly family medical and health expenditure	Yuan/year
		Average age of older couples	The average age of older couples in the family, residence	Age
		Residence	Is the main residence of the family urban or rural	1-2^b
	Personal demographic background	Age	The age of the older adults	Age
		Education level	Education level of the older adults	1-5^c
		Pre-retirement occupation	Occupations in which older individuals spend the majority of their time prior to retirement	1-5^d
		Medical insurance	The main type of medical insurance that older adults possess	1-2^e
		Means of communication	The communication tools and methods that older adults mainly use in their daily life	1-4^f
	Health habits	Smoking status	Whether smoking (smoking refers to those who have smoked continuously or accumulatively for 6 months or more)	1-3^j
		Drinking status	Whether the participant consumes alcohol (drinking refers to consuming alcoholic beverage at least once a week for six months or more)	1-3^j
		Exercise status	Average weekly physical activity in the past 30 days	0-7^h
Outcome variable	Self-rated health	Mobility	Difficulty in completing physical actions independently	1-3ⁱ
		Self-care	Difficulty in completing self-care (washing, dressing, going to the bathroom, et al.)	1-3ⁱ
		Usual activities	The degree of difficulty in engaging in ordinary activities (work, reading, or doing housework)	1-3ⁱ
		Pain/discomfort	The degree of physical pain or discomfort	1-3ⁱ
		Anxiety/depression	The degree of anxiety or depression	1-3ⁱ

^a1-5refers to pharmacy, private hospitals and private clinics, community health service station/village clinic/outpatient department, community health service center /township health center, county-level and above public medical and health institutions; ^b0 means "Rural", 1 means "Urban"; ^c1-6 indicates that the education level is illiterate, primary school, junior high school, high school or technical secondary school, junior college and above; ^d1-5 refers to agricultural production personnel or unemployed, commercial/service industry personnel, workers, professional and technical personnel, and civil servants; ^e1-2 represents basic medical insurance for urban and rural residents, basic medical insurance for urban employees, commercial medical insurance, et al.; ^f1-4 represents smartphone, non-smartphone, landline, verbal or other; ^j1 means smoking or drinking, 2 means quitting smoking or drinking, 3 means no smoking or drinking; ^h0 means not exercising, 1–6 means the average frequency of physical exercises per week was 1 to 6 times, and 7 means the average number of physical exercises per week was 7 times or more; ⁱ1 means that the function or ability of older adults was impaired or extremely low, and 2 means that the function or ability was normal

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ISSN: 1475-9276

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