The Accuracy of Self Reported Anthropometric Measures and Self Reported Diabetes in Nationally Representative Samples of Older Adults in Mexico

Alberto Palloni, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Beth Soldo, University of Pennsylvania
Rebeca Wong, University of Maryland

Surveys of older adults include questions on self-reported conditions and anthropometry. Experience in developed countries shows that self reported conditions possess reasonably high validity. By contrast, in developing countries, these problems are virtually unexplored. In this paper we use two data sets to explore the accuracy of self reported diabetes, height, and weight among older adults in Mexico. In the first survey (ENSA) we have access to results from two glucose tolerance tests (fasting and non-fasting) and to self reportes. In the second survey (MHAS) administered to a representative sample of older adults, measures of body weight and stature were collected jointly with self-reports. We focus on the following four issues:(a) the degree of concordance between self report and objective measures; (b) individual determinants of discordance (c) biases in estimates of determinants of diabetes and obesity stemming from self-reports; (d) estimation of conditional correction equations that adjust self-reports.