NBER Working Papers · 2026 · [{"name": "Christopher J. Ruhm", "affiliation": []}]
中文摘要
考察心理健康状况随时间变化的一种方法, 是利用大型全国性调查中的现有信息。这类基于调查的指标原则上颇具价值, 且已在既有研究中被广泛使用, 但也存在若干挑战, 可能限制其实际效用, 或要求在应用时格外谨慎。本研究使用1999-2019年间五项主要家庭调查中关于美国18-64岁人群的数据, 探讨三个具体问题。第一, 不同的衡量指标, 或来自不同数据集的同一指标, 是否能一致地反映心理困扰随时间的变化? 第二, 单项指标的表现与基于多个问题、经心理测量学验证的筛查量表相比如何? 第三, 使用这些指标的不同函数形式各有哪些收益或潜在代价? 本文的回答如下: 1) 估算出的趋势在不同衡量指标之间存在差异, 且对同一指标而言在不同数据集之间也存在差异, 差异幅度往往很大, 因此部分代理指标对心理健康变化趋势给出了具有误导性的认识; 2) 单项指标的表现不逊于甚至优于基于多个问题的指标; 3) 没有任何一种函数形式在总体上明显优于其他形式。在论证上述结论之后, 本文为试图利用调查数据考察心理健康趋势的研究者归纳了若干经验教训。
Abstract
One way of examining how mental health has changed over time is to use information available in large national surveys. While these survey-based measures are valuable in principle, and have been widely employed in prior research, a number of challenges may limit their practical usefulness or require considerable care in their application. This study uses data on U.S. 18-64 year olds from five major household surveys over the period 1999-2019 to investigate three specific questions. First, do different measures or the same indicator from different data sets consistently show how mental distress has changed over time? Second, how does the performance of single-item measures compare to those of psychometrically validated screeners based on multiple questions? Third, what are the benefits or potential costs of using different functional forms of these measures? The answers to these questions are as follows: 1) the estimated trends vary, often dramatically, across measures and, for the same indicator, across data sets and, as a result, some proxies provide a misleading understanding of how mental health has changed over time; 2) the single-item measures do as well or better than those based on multiple questions; 3) no single functional form demonstrates clear superiority over the others. After demonstrating these points, lessons are elucidated for researchers attempting to use survey data to examine trends in mental health.