Alomar, RS, Parslow, RC orcid.org/0000-0002-3945-5294 and Law, GR (2018) Development of two socioeconomic indices for Saudi Arabia. BMC Public Health, 18. 791.
Abstract
Background: Health and socioeconomic status (SES) are linked in studies worldwide. Measures of SES exist for many countries, however not for Saudi Arabia (SA). We describe two indices of area-based SES for SA. Methods: Routine census data has been used to construct two indices of SES at the geographically-delimited administrative region of Governorates in SA (n = 118). The data used included indicators of educational status, employment status, car and material ownership. A continuous measure of SES was constructed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a categorical measure of SES using latent class analysis (LCA). Both indices were mapped by Governorates. Results: The EFA identified three factors: The first explained 51.58% of the common variance within the interrelated factors, the second 15.14%, and the third 14.26%. These proportions were used in the formulation of the standard index. The scores were fixed to range from 100 for the affluent Governorate and 0 for the deprived. The LCA found a 4 class model as the best model fit. Class 1 was termed "affluent" and included 11.01% of Governorates, class 2 "upper middle class" (44.91%), class 3 "lower middle class" (33.05%) and class 4 "deprived" (11.01%). The populated urbanised Governorates were found to be the most affluent whereas the smaller rural Governorates were the most deprived. Conclusion: This is the first description of measures of SES in SA at a geographical level. Two measures have been successfully constructed and mapped. The maps show similar patterns suggesting validity. Both indices support the common perception of SES in SA.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Keywords: | Saudi Arabia, Socioeconomic status, Exploratory factor analysis, Latent class analysis, Deprivation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 18 Jul 2018 10:45 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jul 2018 07:50 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12889-018-5723-z |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:133415 |
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