DOI: 10.3886/icpsr36364.v3
title: Health Reform Monitoring Survey, United States, First Quarter 2015
title: Version 3

description: In January 2013, the Urban Institute launched the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS), a quarterly survey of the nonelderly population, to explore the value of cutting-edge, Internet-based survey methods to monitor the Affordable Care Act (ACA) before data from federal government surveys are available. Topics covered by the first quarter 2015 survey (the ninth round of the HRMS) include self-reported health status, awareness of key provisions of the ACA, sources of information about the health plans offered in the ACA marketplace, whether health insurance was purchased through the ACA marketplace, difficulties with access to health care and paying for medical bills and housing costs, out-of-pocket health care costs, type of health insurance coverage if any, and reasons for not having health insurance. Respondents who enrolled in a health insurance plan through the ACA marketplace in 2014 were asked if and why they renewed or changed their plan in 2015. Additional information collected by the survey includes age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, family size, education, race, Hispanic origin, United States citizenship, housing type, home ownership, internet access, income, employment status, and employer size. The data file also records whether the respondent reported an ambulatory care sensitive condition or a mental or behavioral health condition and whether the respondent or a family member received Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, unemployment insurance benefits or benefits though the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, Earned Income Tax Credit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or child care services or child care assistance from a local welfare agency or case manager.
description: The HRMS weights reflect the probability of sample selection from the KnowledgePanel and post-stratification to the characteristics of nonelderly adults in the United States based on benchmarks from the Current Population Survey and the Pew Hispanic Center Survey. Variables used in the post-stratification weighting of the KnowledgePanel and the post-stratification weighting of the HRMS include sex, age, race and ethnicity, primary language, education, presence of children in households, household income, family income as a percentage of FPL, homeownership status, internet access, urban or rural status, state group, and census region.
description: Response Rates: The survey completion rate is approximately 60 percent per quarter. The AAPOR cumulative response rate is approximately 5 percent per quarter and is measured as the product of the panel household recruitment rate, the rate at which panel households complete a demographic profile, and the HRMS completion rate.
description: Each quarter, a stratified random sample of adults ages 18-64 is drawn from the KnowledgePanel, a probability-based, nationally represented Internet panel maintained by GfK Custom Research. The approximately 55,000 adults in the panel include households with and without Internet access. Panel members are recruited from an address-based sample frame derived from the United States Postal Service Delivery Sequence File, which covers 97 percent of United States households. The HRMS sample includes a random sample of approximately 7,500 nonelderly adults per quarter, including oversamples of adults with family incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line and adults from selected state groups based on (1) the potential for gains in insurance coverage in the state under the ACA as estimated by the Urban Institute's microsimulation model and (2) states of specific interest to the HRMS funders. Additional funders have supported oversamples of adults from individual states or subgroups of interest including children. However, ICPSR received data only for adults in the general national sample and the income and state group oversamples.

Beginning in the first quarter of 2015, the HRMS shifted from a quarterly fielding schedule to a semiannual schedule.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Public-Use Data
DS2: Restricted-Use Data
description: Household population aged 18-64.
description: web-based surveyThe principal investigators did not provide many of the variables collected in the ninth round, specifically, the open-ended textual response variables (e.g., the variable for Question Q8b), the variables from the questionnaire module on child health care (Questions QS1 to QS31), and many variables from the KnowledgePanel profile questionnaire.Additional information about this survey is available on the HRMS Web site.Demographic variables are provided by the KnowledgePanel.