A cross-cultural assessment of perceived health problems in the elderly

To study cross-cultural differences in perceived health problems in the elderly the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) developed by Hunt et al. was administered to subjects from the People's Republic of China and Australia. The Australian stratum was further categorized according to cardiovascular status. Analyses of covariance (with age as the covariate) on each of the six subscales of the NHP yielded significant differences for 'Energy', 'Pain', 'Emotional reactions', 'Social isolation' and 'Physical mobility'. No differences were found for the 'Sleep' subscale. Through comparisons between the mean scores for the four strata and from normative data it is concluded that it is likely that the NHP is 'culture free' on the dimensions 'Energy', 'Pain', 'Emotional reactions', 'Social isolation' and 'Physical mobility'.