One hundred ninety items were initially constructed following the prescribed guidelines to develop the cognitive index for measuring health status with the help of Equal Appearing Internal Scales described by Thurstone (1928). The scores obtained from 40 judges out of 110 were computed and subjected to item analysis comprising of calculation of median and interquartile range. One statement for each of the eleven median values was selected. In the final selection, the index consisted of 22 items with smallest interquartile range within each value. The reliability of the health status index was tested by split-half and test-retest method. The co-efficient of correlation values were 0.93 and 0.93 respectively which were found to be significant at 1 percent level of significance. It was found that the health status index constructed was highly stable and dependable for measurement

Keyword: Health status; Cognitive