General health harmonised standard

Policy details

What is harmonisation?

Harmonisation is the process of making statistics and data more comparable, consistent and coherent. Harmonised standards set out how to collect and report statistics to ensure comparability across different data collections in the Government Statistical Service (GSS). Harmonisation produces more useful statistics that give users a greater level of understanding.

 

What do we mean by general health?

General health is a topic of interest across government. The 2021 Census will collect data on this topic in all four countries of the United Kingdom.

This harmonised standard measures an individual’s subjective opinion of their health. This measurement is important because it is a good indicator of an individual’s demand for healthcare. It can also be used to determine an individual’s healthy life expectancy.

 

Questions and response options (inputs)

The harmonised question on this topic is designed to collect basic information, for use in the majority of surveys. It is not designed to replace questions used in specialist surveys where more detailed analysis is required.

The question

Question	Response options
How is your health in general? Is it…	1. Very good 2. Good 3. Fair 4. Bad 5. Very bad

 

Using this standard

Guidance for data collection

This question is a subjective measure and should not be asked by proxy.

Types of data collection this standard is suitable for

This question measures subjective wellbeing related to health. It is for use in social surveys.

The standard can be used for:

• interviewer led questionnaires
• Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI)
• Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI)
• paper based and online self-completion forms

 

Presenting and reporting the data (outputs)

These tables show the output categories for general health. We are not prescribing a code but have given examples. The coding used should comply with the coding conventions used in the specific survey source.

Five point scale

Response	Example code
Very good	1
Good	2
Fair	3
Bad	4
Very bad	5

Dichotomous output categories

Response	Example code
Good health	1 or 2
Poor health	3 or 4 or 5

Trichotomous output categories

Response	Example code
Good health	1 or 2
Fair health	3
Poor health	4 or 5

 

Comparability

This harmonised standard is not just harmonised within the United Kingdom, but also across the European Union. It is harmonised with the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and it is identical to the self-perceived health question of the Minimum European Health Module.

Outputs that use this standard are comparable with other surveys that also use this standard. However, we would not recommend comparing levels of general health from outputs using this standard with other outputs that use an alternative measure.

 

Examples of when this standard has been used

Surveys that used this standard

• Community Life Survey
• National Survey for Wales
• Scottish Health Survey
• Health Survey for England
• Food and You Survey
• Scottish Household Survey
• Scottish Social Attitudes Survey
• European Working Conditions Survey
• Continuous Household Survey (NISRA)
• Scottish Crime and Justice Survey
• Northern Ireland Health Survey
• National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles 2
• Crime Survey for England and Wales
• Family Resources Survey
• Living Costs and Food Survey
• Taking Part: the National Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport
• Labour Force Survey

Some surveys have not adopted the harmonised standard but do still produce comparable data, including:

• Opinions and Lifestyle Survey
• British Social Attitudes Survey
• Wealth and Assets Survey
• Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey

Use in the census

This standard has been chosen for use in the 2021 Census in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In all four nations, census questions need parliamentary approval. This will be sought during 2020. It is not anticipated that any of the questions on this topic will change.

 

Development of this standard

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) adopted this question from 2008. It replaced a previous general health question which used a scale with three response options. An article in Health Statistics Quarterly investigated the effect of this change on the time series and the impact on estimates of healthy life expectancy.

 

Further information

Longitudinal and cross sectional data sources

In longitudinal sources, this standard is used to measure change in general health status among individuals. In cross sectional data sources, it is used to measure changes in the proportion of the population classified to each category over time.

Healthy life expectancy

The ONS dichotomises this variable to calculate Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE). If you want to know more, the ONS explains how it calculates HLE.

Using this question in the Welsh language

This harmonised standard was designed in the English language. At present we do not provide a Welsh language translation, as user demand for this standard is UK wide and Welsh language testing has not been completed to ensure a translation is comparable and appropriate. Harmonised standards based on Census research have been tested in the Welsh language, which is why we are able to provide Welsh versions of them. If you are interested in using a Welsh language version of a harmonised standard that has not been translated, please contact us at Harmonisation@statistics.gov.uk.

Contact us

We are always interested in hearing from users so we can develop our work. If you use or produce statistics based on this topic, please contact the team at Harmonisation@statistics.gov.uk.

 

Updates