National Health Interview Survey

Alternate Titles(s): NHIS
UID: 10004
Description

The National Health Interview Survey is a cross-sectional household interview survey. Sampling and interviewing are continuous throughout each year. The sampling plan follows a multistage area probability design that permits the representative sampling of households and noninstitutional group quarters (e.g., college dormitories). NHIS addresses topics such as health status, use of health services, health behaviors, insurance coverage, access to care, measure of functioning, injuries and poisonings, immunizations, and conditions (e.g. asthma, diabetes, heart, mental health, cancer).

For each year the NHIS provides a description of the survey, a questionnaire reference guide, reports (if available), and a data release document. Within each public data release document is a readme file, notices for data users, and links to the data for each category within the survey (e.g. household file, person file). Each category provides a summary, layout and frequencies of the variables and downloadable data files in ASCII format. Sample SAS, SPSS, and Stata statements are also included. Restricted data may also be requested for survey years 1997 onwards.

Publisher
Timeframe
1963 - Present
Geographic Coverage
United States
Local Expert
Subject of Study
Subject Domain
Population Age
Adolescent (13 years - 18 years)
Adult (19 years - 64 years)
Senior (65 years - 79 years)
Aged (80 years and over)
Keywords

Access

Restrictions
Free to All
Fee Required
Application Required
Instructions

Public-use datasets are freely available on the NHIS website through the access link.

Restricted data can be requested for a fee. A listing of restricted variables can be found here. For an overview of the application process, click here. To apply for access to restricted data, begin by submitting a project proposal to the Research Data Center (RDC).

Access via NHIS

Download publicly-available data

Access via RDC

Apply for access to restricted data

Associated Publications
Data Type
Study Type
Observational
Dataset Format(s)
SAS, Stata, ASCII, PDF, SUDAAN
PubMed Search
View articles which use this dataset
Other Resources
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