DOI: 10.3886/icpsr07730.v1
title: National Survey of Access to Medical Care, 1975-1976
title: Version 1

description: This study was undertaken for the purpose of providing baseline national indicators of access to health care for an evaluation of a program of hospital-based primary care group practices funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The main objective of that large-scale social experiment was to improve access to medical care for the population in areas served by the groups. The access framework and questionnaires designed for the study were developed to provide empirical indicators of the concept that could be used to monitor progress toward this objective. Five data collection instruments were used by the study: the Household Enumeration Folder, the Main Questionnaire, the Health Opinions Questionnaire, the Physician Supplement, and the Hospital/Extended Care Supplement. The Household Enumeration Folder collected basic demographic information on all household members and served as a screener for the episode of illness and minority oversamples. The Main Questionnaire collected information on disability, symptoms of illness, episodes of illness, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and access to health care: sources of medical care utilized, problems associated with access to sources of care (e.g., transportation, parking, waiting time for an appointment), satisfaction with medical services received, utilization of medical diagnostic procedures, dental care, and eye care, and insurance coverage and out-of-pocket expenditures for health care. Respondents' opinions concerning the medical care that they received were gauged by the Health Opinions Questionnaire. The Physician Supplement and the Hospital/Extended Care Supplement collected information on physicians contacted and facilities utilized in connection with reported episodes of illness. File 1, File 2, and File 3 constitute the data files for this collection. File 1 comprises data from the Household Enumeration Folder, the Main Questionnaire, and the Health Opinions Questionnaire, plus variables from secondary sources, such as characteristics, derived from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile, of physicians named as caregivers by respondents, and medical shortage data, from various sources, for the respondent's county of residence. File 2 contains the data from the Physician Supplement, while File 3 provides the data collected by the Hospital/Extended Care Supplement.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: File 1: Data From Main Questionnaire and Other Sources 
 DS2: File 2: Physician Supplement Data 
 DS3: File 3: Hospital/Extended Care Supplement Data
description: The weight variable V805 is a character (string) variable written in scientific notation with nine significant digits. Variable V857 is a numeric version of V805 that is rounded to six significant digits.
description: Noninstitutionalized population of the United States.
description: A self-weighting probability sample was selected using the National Opinion Research Center master sample. In addition, special oversamples were selected for three groups: persons experiencing episodes of illness, southern non-SMSA Blacks, and southwestern Spanish-heritage persons.