Assessing the Quality of the Height and Weight Data in the HILDA Survey

Abstract

While the HILDA Survey is not primarily a survey about health, the fact that the survey is portrayed to sample members as a study about life in Australia means that health cannot be ignored. And indeed health measures have been collected since the very commencement of the study. Nevertheless the set of measures included in wave 1 was extremely brief, mostly comprising measures of disability and the limitations that such disabilities impose, the subjective health scales that comprise the SF36, and very crude indicators of a small number of health-related behaviours (exercise, smoking and alcohol consumption). In recent years more consideration has been given to expanding the health related content. As part of this strategy, questions on height and body weight were included for the first time in wave 6, with the expectation that they will become a regular feature of the HILDA Survey. The principal intent here is to provide the necessary data to enable the construction of a measure of healthy body weight; the body mass index (BMI).