DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09674.v1
title: National Medical Expenditure Survey, 1987: Household Survey, Health Status Questionnaire and Access to Care Supplement [Public Use Tape 9]
title: Version 1

description: Public Use Tape 9 contains the initial release of data from 
 two supplementary parts of the 1987 National Medical Expenditure 
 Survey's Household Survey: the Health Status Questionnaire, and the 
 Access to Care Supplement. The file provides person-level data for all 
 those respondents (other than infants less than one year of age) with 
 both information for their entire period of 1987 survey eligibility 
 (Rounds 1-4) and valid data on a minimum set of items in both the 
 Health Status Questionnaire and Access to Care Supplement. The minimum 
 items were: perceived general health status, at least one question on 
 availability and characteristics of a usual source of medical or dental 
 care, all items in the checklists of chronic conditions (for adults 
 aged 18 and over), at least one question on screening for breast and 
 cervical cancer (for adult females), and all questions on immunizations 
 (for children aged 1-17). The Health Status Questionnaire was 
 administered in three age-specific versions between Rounds 1 and 2 of 
 the interviews. Adults aged 18 and over responded for themselves and 
 for children aged 5-17 and under 5 years in their families. The 
 Questionnaire contained items concerning self-assessments of current 
 and past health status, acute and chronic conditions, vision and 
 hearing, dental status, mental health and functional ability, and 
 health-related behaviors such as care-seeking and preventive care. The 
 Access to Care Supplement was administered to all eligible household 
 respondents during Round 3 interviews, and covered access to and usual 
 sources of medical and dental care. For medical providers identified as 
 a usual source of care, information was sought on their specialty, sex, 
 race/ethnicity, and on availability and convenience in terms of hours 
 of practice, travel and waiting times, and related items. Other topics 
 in the Access to Care Supplement included reasons for the lack of a 
 usual source of care and sources of care during an illness. The file 
also includes basic demographic data from the Household Survey.
description: The Household Survey is a national probability sample of 
 about 17,500 households in the national multistage area samples of 
 Westat and NORC, with oversamples of population segments known to be at 
 risk of needing or using services for chronic impairments or long-term 
 illness--in particular the elderly, the functionally impaired, poor and 
low-income families, and Black and Hispanic minorities.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Data File
DS2: SAS Control Cards
DS3: Data Dictionary and Technical and Programming Information
description: The civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United 
States.
description: (1) The principal investigator notes that the data in 
 Public Use Tape 9 are released prior to final data cleaning and 
 editing, in order to provide prompt access to the NMES data by the 
 research and policy community. (2) The records on this file can be 
 linked to all other data files from the Household Survey (ICPSR 9339, 
 9340, 9675, and others to come). (3) Both unweighted and weighted 
 frequencies are included in the documentation. The unweighted age 
 frequencies are 1-17 years (N=7,578), 18-64 years (N=17,367), and 65+ 
 (N=5,093). The unweighted race and ethnic frequencies include 6,241 
 Black, 422 Asian American, and 2,988 Hispanic respondents. (4) The data 
contain dashes, decimal points, and blank characters.