Perceived general health, prevalence

Eurostat data. One of the ways used by governments to assess the positive aspects of health is surveying the population's self-perceived health status. Subjective or self-reported health status is not a substitute for more objective indicators but rather complements them: reports of self-perceived health introduce a consumer perspective into population health monitoring and reveal aspects of health that may not become apparent with more traditional measures. The data come from non-harmonised national Health Interview Surveys (HIS) and the countries were asked to post-harmonise the data according to the guidelines described in HIS_guidelines 2004. The HIS data were collected in different years (between 1996 and 2003) depending on the country. There is no fixed periodicity for this kind of health survey. Very few countries have a yearly survey on this subject. The national surveys were not all performed in the same period and the results were not all available at the same time. From 2004 in EU15 Member States and 2005 in the new Member States, the new EU Statistics on Income and Living Condition survey (SILC) will be used.