This unit will introduce you to the various terms used when describing and measuring health.

Specifically, at the end of this unit you will be able to:

• Explain the terms mortality and morbidity and their usefulness in measuring health.
• Describe the various ways of measuring health including measures of mortality (e.g. crude death rates, Standardised Mortality Rates) and morbidity.
• Evaluate the value of such measurements of health.

In order to complete this unit will need:

• A calculator (or a good mathematical brain!).
• An introductory text book on health psychology (e.g. Ogden, 2004) and a text on measuring health (e.g. Bowling, 2007).

Guidelines on these web pages: how to use them, and the various conventions used within them can be found on this link.