Official definitions of health diverge sharply from the indicators actually measured.
Evidence
- The WHO defines health officially as “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” but in practice virtually all indices and measures are disease and illness related. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1184
Categorization
- XREF: Directly instantiates the book’s central claim that concept structure and measurement structure can part ways — the positive-absence gap here is the same shape as the democracy/autocracy measurement problem.
- SHARE: Send to a public-health or epidemiology friend — a single sentence that indicts an entire field’s measurement practice.