Psychometric and psychological characteristics of elder people’s response to question about their health

It was shown that elder people’s self-perceptive health isn`t only under emphasis of physical function and other factors like social and cognitive functions effect on it.

This research investigates psychometric and psychological characteristics of elder people’s response to questions about their health during an eighth-year study.

The research design was a 2 × 4 factorial design which was conducted during the years 1387 to 1395. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, a sample of 393 elderly people of Isfahan city was selected by non-randomly purposeful sampling method and their self-rating health, physical, social and cognitive functions, depression, and the number of chronic diseases were measured four time. mixed ANOVA was used to analyze the data.

Findings showed that the elder people’s response to question about their health should not be investigated across a given time because in this condition its validity would be weak. Investigations of validity in four profiles that are created by two kind of response during two time duration (good-good, good-bad, bad-good, bad-bad); was higher and is an strong index of response validity. Also poor, mediate and strong physical activities and social and cognitive functions impact on elder people’s self-perceptive health.

According to findings, it is recommended that elder people should do any kind of poor, mediate and strong physical activities that they can for better self-health and improve their social and cognitive functions to have a better understanding of their health.