Examining Emotional, Physical, Social, and Spiritual Health as Determinants of Self-Rated Health Status

Abstract

Purpose.: To determine whether individuals' perceptions of their emotional, physical, social, and spiritual health constitute elements of their self-rated health status operationalized with a commonly employed single indicator.Design.: Secondary analysis of cross-sectional survey data. Structural equation modeling with LISREL was used.Setting.: The Yukon Health Promotion Survey, Yukon Territory, Canada, 1993.Subjects.: The population-based sample was made up of 742 women and 713 men between 15 and 90 years of age; 80.3% responded.Measures.: Self-rated health status was operationalized with the “excellent, good, fair, poor” indicator derived from the question: “In general, compared to other people your age, would you say your health is. …” Social, spiritual, emotional, and physical health status were also self-rated from excellent to poor.Results.: The model's fit of the data was acceptable. Only physical health status significantly contributed to the variance in self-rated health status (55.1% of the variance was explained). Emotional, social, and spiritual health were found to have no effect on individuals' ratings of their health status.Conclusions.: Although recent conceptualizations have broadened in much of the theoretical and political discourse about health, especially in health promotion, the self-rated health status indicator measures only physical health status.