DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37487
title: Health Reform Monitoring Survey, United States, Third Quarter 2018
title: Archival Version

description: In January 2013, the Urban Institute launched the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS), a 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 16th round of the survey (third quarter 2018) include self-reported health status, health insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, out-of-pocket health care costs, health care affordability, work experience, awareness of Medicaid work requirements, experiences with health care and social service providers, and health plan choice. Additional information collected by the survey includes age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, education, race, Hispanic origin, United States citizenship, housing type, home ownership, internet access, income, employment status, and employer size.
description: This study was conducted to provide information on health insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, health care affordability, and self-reported health status, as well as timely data on important implementation issues under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
description: The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) provides data on health insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, health care affordability, and self-reported health status. Beginning in the second quarter of 2013, each round of the HRMS also contains topical questions focusing on timely ACA policy issues. In the first quarter of 2015, the HRMS shifted from a quarterly fielding schedule to a semiannual schedule.
description: The variables include original survey questions, household demographic profile data, and constructed variables which can be used to link panel members who participated in multiple rounds.
description: The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (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 American Community 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 federal poverty levels (FPL), homeownership status, internet access, urban or rural status, state group, and census region. In January 2017, all rounds of the HRMS were reweighted due to a change in the Current Population Survey question on Internet access that was being used to create benchmarks for the construction of the post stratification weights.
description: Response Rates: The HRMS response rate is roughly five percent each round.
description: For each HRMS round a stratified random sample of adults ages 18-64 is drawn from the KnowledgePanel, a probability-based, nationally represented Internet panel maintained by Ipsos. 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 9,500 nonelderly adults per quarter, including oversamples of adults with family incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line. Additional funders have supported oversamples of adults from individual states or subgroups of interest. However, the data file only includes data for adults in the general national sample and the income oversample.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Public-Use Data
DS2: Restricted-Use Data
description: Household population aged 18-64. Smallest Geographic Unit: Census region
description: web-based surveyMore information about this study is available on the HRMS website.Several changes were made to the survey instrument following a soft launch of the survey:
- Q9 was randomly assigned to 50% of respondents selected into the question. No edits were made to the Q9 variables in the public use file.
- TQ130 through TQ141 were only asked if Q14B=1, 2, 3, refused, or missing. Variables for these questions are coded as missing in the public use file if Q14B=4.
- Changes were made to the health plan choice questions in TQ94E-H and the universe of respondents who received them. Variables for these questions are coded as missing for respondents who did not receive the updated questions.Demographic variables are provided by the KnowledgePanel.