Background, attitudinal and behavioural patterns of individuals occupying eight discrete health states1

This paper examines the backgrounds, attitudes, and behavioural characteristics of individuals occupying the eight discrete health states posited in Wolinsky's recently developed comprehensive health status model. Analysis of variance indicates that age, occupation, education, income, private indemnity insurance coverage, expecting sick role legitimation, use of physician specialists, and having regular sources and sites of health care delivery are differentially distributed across the eight health states. Multiple classification and discriminant function analyses indicate that the pattern reflected in these data is the traditional relationship of health status to socioeconomic status, its second-order benefits, and its correlates. Forty-one per cent of all the individuals studied could be correctly placed into their proper health states by using two discriminant functions reflecting socioeconomic status and related characteristics. Regression models using these same socio-economic and related characteristics explained 32 per cent of the variance in both an abbreviated form of the polytomous health status measure and a continuously coded version of it. Based on the differential utility of regression models severally predicting the individual health states, we propose merging the social class and drift hypotheses to explain the pervasive relationship between socioeconomic status and health status

Discriminant function analysis · Economic growth · Economics · Explained variation · Health care · Population · Social class · Socioeconomic status · Sociology · Statistics · Variance (accounting) · Demography · Health disparities and outcomes · Mathematics · Psychology

• The use of quantitative medical sociology

  Open Access•Blane David•Sociology of Health & Illness•2003

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• Socioeconomic status and health status

  Open Access•David Ian Hay, David Hay•Social Science & Medicine•1988

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• Salient issues in choosing a new doctor

  Open Access•Fredric D Wolinsky, Steiber et al.•Social Science & Medicine•1982

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• Assessing the Effects of the Physical, Psychological, and Social Dimensions of Health on the Use of Health Services

  Open Access•Fredric D Wolinsky•Sociological Quarterly•1982

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