DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09466.v1
title: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I: Epidemiologic Followup Study, 1986
title: Version 1

description: The NHANES I Epidemiologic Followup Study (NHEFS) is a longitudinal study of adults originally examined, measured, and interviewed in 1971-1975 as part of the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I). The NHEFS was jointly initiated by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the National Institute on Aging, and other components of the National Institutes of Health and Public Health Service. The primary purpose of the followup study is to investigate longitudinal relationships between the extensive data on physiological, nutritional, behavioral, and demographic characteristics collected during NHANES I and subsequent morbidity or mortality from specific diseases and conditions. The 1982-1984 wave of data collection for NHEFS followed all medically examined respondents who had been 25 to 74 years in 1971-1975. The 1986 NHEFS wave focused on older members of the NHANES I NHEFS cohorts, those who had been 55-74 years of age at their baseline examinations in 1971-1975 and were not known to be deceased at the time of the 1982-1984 NHEFS. In the 1986 NHEFS, the surviving respondents were 65-89 years of age. Data were collected on changes in vital, health, and functional status and use of health care services that had occurred since the last contact, whether the contact was in 1982-1984 or 1971-1975. The vital and tracing status file documents efforts to trace all subjects who had been 55 years of age and over at NHANES I (N = 5,677) and ascertain their vital status and demographic data. Further data collection was aimed at the 3,980 subjects who were not known to be deceased by 1982-1984. Thirty-minute telephone interviews were conducted with either sample members (N = 2,558) or with proxies for the incapacitated (N = 469) and deceased (N = 581) subjects. Questions were asked on household composition, self-reports of physician-diagnosed medical conditions (with detail on reports of cancer, bone fractures, and non-hospital health facility stays), death if applicable, functional limitations, use of health care facilities, and interviewer observations about the respondent. Items on coronary bypass surgery, pacemaker procedures, and community services utilization were 1986 additions to the NHEFS questionnaire. For those respondents who had not been interviewed in 1982-1984, questions were included on smoking and alcohol use, vision and hearing, exercise and weight, and pregnancy and menstrual history. Health care facility records were abstracted to provide diagnostic and summary information on single or multiple overnight stays in hospitals and nursing homes for 2,021 subjects reporting such stays. Death certificate data, including International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision codes for multiple causes of death, were added for 661 decedents reported since the 1982-1984 wave, for a total of 2,266 decedents.
description: Multistage national probability sample. The original sample in 1971-1975 (N = 31,973) was ages 1-74 years, with oversampling of elderly and low-income persons and pregnant women. From this sample, the 1986 selection was further made of members who were in 1971-1975 both aged 55-74 and medically examined (N = 5,677), and from that group, those not known to have been deceased at the time of the 1982-1984 wave (N = 3,980).
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Vital and Tracing Status DS2: Interview Data DS3: Mortality Data DS4: Health Care Facility Record
description: The civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States aged 55-74 in 1971-1975 and still surviving in 1982-1984.
description: The age distributions for the 3,980 targeted 1986 sample members were (in 1971-1975) ages 55-64 (N = 1,541) and 65-74 (N = 2,439). For the 3,608 interviewed in 1986, 3,090 were white, 497 Black, and 21 other. The data contain dashes (-), and blanks. Per agreement with NCHS, ICPSR distributes the data file(s) and technical documentation in this collection in their original form as prepared by NCHS. ICPSR has produced machine-readable documentation through optical character recognition (OCR) scanning of the NCHS codebooks. The Sample Sequence Number variable may be used to link the NHEFS 1986 files with the 1982-1984 files (ICPSR 8900) and with the NHANES 1971-1975 files (ICPSR 7987, 8055-8070, 8507).