
Self-reported Symptoms of Reproductive Tract Infections: The Question of Accuracy and Meaning
Author(s) -
Durr-e-Nayab
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v47i3pp.241-265
Subject(s) - concordance , meaning (existential) , false positive paradox , context (archaeology) , reproductive health , disease , population , psychology , medicine , intervention (counseling) , clinical psychology , family medicine , psychiatry , environmental health , pathology , psychotherapist , geography , archaeology , machine learning , computer science
Verbal surveys are the most common way of gauging anypopulation’s health status, but questions remain regarding the accuracyof the responses they elicit. The present paper compares women’sself-reports regarding their experiences with reproductive tractinfections (RTIs) and the medical diagnosis that they went through toascertain the presence or otherwise of the infections. Weak concordancewas found between women’s self-reports and the medical diagnosis, withthe former over-representing the presence of infections. Some of theselfreported symptoms were pathogenic in nature, as represented by thetrue positive reports, but the majority of the self-reports were falsepositives when compared to medical diagnosis. The conventional healthsurveys, relying solely on verbal responses, thus, do not essentiallyrepresent the actual health situation of a population studied, and anypolicy intervention formulated exclusively on this information would beflawed. There is a need to understand the non-medical context ofillnesses to understand the disease fully. JEL classification: I000,I190 Keywords: Health, Reproductive Health, Health Surveys’Accuracy