Comments on Health Indicators: Methodological Perspectives
- 1 July 1976
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in International Journal of Health Services
- Vol. 6 (3) , 509-520
- https://doi.org/10.2190/1a2a-5jnb-db35-vwx7
Abstract
This paper discusses several basic conceptual and methodological problems in the development and use of health indicators. We observe that two tendencies of the health indicators movement may deter progress toward producing information useful in decision making, namely, the quest for elegant mathematical formulations of health status indexes and the tendency to conceptualize “health” in terms of expansive definitions. To improve the utility of such information, it is suggested that health indicators should measure variables specified by a social system model and should be scaled according to units that are relevant to decision-making criteria.Keywords
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