The national health interview survey: 50 years and going strong

Abstract

It is 5 p.m. in October, and it’s already dark outside. The interviewer for the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) drives slowly along the street, looking for one of the houses on her interview assignment list, but finding it difficult to see the house numbers. At last, she identifies the house she is looking for, parks her car, grabs a pile of papers, retrieves her laptop from the car’s trunk, walks up to the front door, and rings the doorbell. When there is no answer, the interviewer places a folder of NHIS information on the front doorstep and leaves, planning to come back and try again later. Three hours later, she returns, and, this time, an elderly man answers the door. The interviewer introduces herself as a U.S. Census Bureau employee who is conducting NHIS interviews on behalf of the National Center for Health Statistics. The man recalls previously receiving a letter saying this household was randomly selected to participate in the NHIS. The letter briefl y described the NHIS, informed the reader of the confi dentiality protection the gathered data would receive, and stated that participation is voluntary. The man agrees to be interviewed, but he lives alone and is unwilling to let the interviewer come inside his house. So, for the next 30 minutes, he and the interviewer stand on their respective sides of the open front door while the many NHIS questions are asked and answered. During the interview, the interviewer places her left arm around her open laptop, braces that arm against the outside wall of the house, and supports the laptop from below by jutting out her stomach. The sophisticated software with which the laptop is equipped helps her methodically work her way through the circuitous “skip patterns” of the NHIS questionnaire. By porch light, she reads aloud the questions that appear on the laptop screen and types in the man’s responses with her right hand. A notebook containing fl ashcards—lists of possible responses to questions whose