Health interview survey, 1981
By: principal investigator, United States Department of Health and Human Servies, National Center for Health Statistics
Series: Health interview survey series; ICPSR -- 8319; ICPSR (Series) -- 8319
Publisher: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor
Published: 1985
Place of publication: Ann Arbor, Mich
Language: und
Format: [computer file] /
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Public health; Statistics; Medical care; Utilization; Children; Health and hygiene; Health surveys; Medical Statistics
Description: This survey proposes to inform legislation regarding health expenditures, to monitor occurrence and severity of illness and disability, and to aid in the design of accident prevention programs and measure their success. Two principal concepts in the area of medical care include the physician visit and the classification of visits by type of service. Since the focus of the interview data is on the impact health matters have on the individual rather than on medical criteria, the concepts of morbidity, disability, and the use of services differ from those used in medical and scientific studies. Data include: the occurrence and severity of illness and disability, health care service use, patient visits to doctors or hospitals and operations, limitations on activities due to chronic or acute condition, frequency of medical or dental visits, current health status, insurance coverage, as well as demographic statistics.
Notes: The Health Interview Surveys (HIS), a continuous sampling and interviewing of the civilian, non-institutionalized population of the United States, contain information on the social, demographic, and economic aspects of illness, disability, and medical services. Information on the utilization of medical care facilities is also available in the form of data on medical and dental care, hospitalization, preventive care, nursing care, prosthetic appliances, and self-care. The Health Interview Surveys are the primary instrument of a major National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data collection program.

Holding archive: National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging.

ICPSR data class: Class II and IV.

Data collected: 1981.

United States.

All of the files have a logical record length of 469 characters. This previously structured data collected has been flattened into five rectangular files.

Persons file: 107,480 records, 88 variables; Doctor visits file: 19,070 records, 71 variables; Condition file: 76,643 records, 102 variables; Hospital file: 14,227 records, 83 variables; Household file: 41,265 records, 46 variables; Child Health supplement: 15,416 records, logical record length of 2,400 characters.