Abstract
Estimates of fatigue severity vary according to whether participants are recruited from hospital-based tertiary care clinics, primary medical care, or community-based samples. Sampling methodology is a central issue in epidemiological research because differences in utilization and differential access to health care among participants of varying sociodemographic backgrounds have biased earlier prevalence and severity estimates of fatigue. Most existing studies do not employ randomly selected representative samples and do not examine ethnic and other sociodemographic differences. Findings presented herein derive from a community-based study of fatigue severity and prevalence in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 28,673 households in Chicago. The study examined sociodemographic differences in fatigue across African American, White, Latino, and Asian American samples according to age, gender, socioeconomic status, marital status, and parental status. Latinos who were female, Latinos who were older, and Latinos of higher socioeconomic status reported the highest relative severity of fatigue. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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Song, S., Jason, L.A. & Taylor, R.R. The Relationship Between Ethnicity and Fatigue in a Community-Based Sample. Journal of Gender, Culture, and Health 4, 255–268 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023263303987
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023263303987