National Health Interview Survey

Each annual data set can be used to examine the disease burden and access to care that individuals and families are currently experiencing in the United States.

[2] NHIS allows both governmental and outside researchers to obtain estimates on a variety of health-related topics among either the entire nation or specific demographic groups of the population.

Also, since the survey design is cross-sectional rather than longitudinal, health information can be trended for demographic groups and the country as a whole, but not for individuals or families.

Authorized by the National Health Survey Act of 1956,[3] the U.S. Public Health Service was tasked with implementing an annual survey to collect information on morbidities – physical or mental conditions related to any illness or injury – and medical service and medical facility utilization.

[4] NCHS continually produces chart books, statistical briefs, and fact sheets using NHIS data which shed light on these various facets of morbidities and how the American populace behaves in response.

This supplement included questions about cancer screenings, diet, exercise, smoking, sun exposure, and family history.

These supplement included questions about work-related health conditions, work organization factors, and occupational psychosocial and physical/chemical exposures.

[11] Noninstitutional civilian Americans (both citizens and non-citizens) are sampled by household, allowing for analysis of medical behavior at the familial-level.

Unlike surveys with a panel or longitudinal design, the entirety of data collected from each household occurs from a single interview lasting about an hour.

In addition to appropriately weighting households that might have been over-represented in the raw data (due to oversampling of populations of interest), survey analysis packages are needed to employ the Taylor-series linearization technique to correctly calculate the standard errors and confidence intervals.

[15] The current publicly available annual National Health Interview Survey data release consists of four files which describe the demographics and health-related characteristics of the survey population at the household, family, and person-level, as well as two files designed to capture information on any injuries experienced during the year.

Examining this file using the final weight variable (WTFA) generalizes to the entire noninstitutional, civilian United States population.