Population health status in China: EQ-5D results, by age, sex and socio-economic status, from the National Health Services Survey 2008

摘要

Purpose: To measure and analyse national EQ-5D data andto provide norms for the Chinese general population by age,sex, educational level, income and employment status.Methods: The EQ-5D instrument was included in theNational Health Services Survey 2008 (n = 120,703) tomeasure health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Alldescriptive analyses by socio-economic status (educationallevel, income and employment status) and by clinicalcharacteristics (discomfort during the past 2 weeks, diagnosedwith chronic diseases during the past 6 months andhospitalised during the past 12 months) were stratified bysex and age group.Results: Health status declines with advancing age, andwomen reported worse health status than men, which is inline with EQ-5D population health studies in other countriesand previous population health studies in China. The EQ-5Dinstrument distinguished well for the known groups: positiveassociation between socio-economic status and HRQoL wasobserved among the Chinese population. Persons with clinicalcharacteristics had worse HRQoL than those without.Conclusions: This study provides Chinese populationHRQoL data measured by the EQ-5D instrument, based ona national representative sample. The main findings fordifferent subgroups are consistent with results from EQ-5Dpopulation studies in other countries, and discriminativevalidity was supported.