Discrepancies in Visual Impairment Prevalence: Comparing Self-Reports and Standard Tests in the Longitudinal Ageing Study of India

Rajeev Singh, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Priya Maurya, French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED)
Suraj Maiti, Virginia Tech

Self-reported measures of health are widely used and accepted to understand the status of the respondents in a survey. However, due to potential biases, self-reported measures may fail to accurately capture the prevalence and severity of undiagnosed visual impairment (VI), underscoring the need for more objective diagnostic tools. This study aims to assess the inconsistency between self-reports and standard tests. The study used data from the first wave of the Longitudinal Ageing Study of India (2017-18) with 56,358 individuals aged 45 and above. Reliability measures such as sensitivity, specificity and kappa statistics were used to examine the inconsistency between self-reports and standard tests. Further, multinomial logistic regression was used to identify the covariates that significantly affect (mis)reporting of VI. The study findings show that self-reported VI and measured VA prevalence was 23.2% and 35.9%, respectively. The overall sensitivity and specificity of self-reported VI was 52.1% (CI: 51.2% to 52.9%) and 67.2% (CI: 66.8% to 67.6%). The ?-coefficient exhibited a decent magnitude of 0.157 (95% CI: 0.149, 0.164), implying slight agreement and lack of concordance between self-reported VI and measured VA. Findings highlight the need for tailored intervention through education and awareness programs to address the true burden of VI.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Qualitative data/methods/approaches, Health and Morbidity, Population Ageing

See paper.