The reliability of the Minimum European Health Module

The Minimum European Health Module (MEHM) consists of 3 global questions concerning 3 health domains: self-perceived health, chronic conditions and long-term activity limitation. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the reliability of the MEHM. Participants of the Belgian Food Consumption Survey were interviewed twice: 170 individuals were selected for the MEHM reliability evaluation. For each of the 3 questions Pearson and Kappa coefficients were estimated. Analyses were stratified by gender, age, education, language and time between the interviews. The Pearson correlations are between 0.73 and 0.81. The Kappa estimates are good or excellent: 0.74 (self-perceived health), 0.77 (chronic conditions) and 0.68 (activity limitation). Also stratified analyses indicated in general an acceptable reliability. The MEHM has an acceptable reliability.