The correlates of health perceptions in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE

Although measures of health perceptions have been routinely incorporated into assessments of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the relationships of other characteristics of these individuals to their health perceptions is not fully understood. We describe the cross sectional associations of sociodemographic, disease, and functional status characteristics with perceived health in individuals with RA.

METHODS

This description was generated through a 2-phase secondary data analysis using 2 statistical approaches: recursive partitioning of the sample and standard multivariate logistic regression techniques.

RESULTS

Both methodological approaches identified education, race, depression, and physical activity as important correlates of self-assessed health in RA. Each approach, in its own way, also identified an interactive effect between physical activity and education and between depression and race in these models.

CONCLUSION

An individual's sociodemographic, disease, and functional status characteristics form a complex model of the correlates of health perceptions of individuals with RA.