Use of Single Years of Age in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) Weighting to Improve Drug Prevalence Estimates

• Activity Number: 685
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 5, 2010 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Patrick Chen*+ and Neeraja Sathe and Michael Jones and Lanting Dai and Jeff Laufenberg and Ralph E. Folsom and Harper Gordek
• Companies: RTI International and RTI International and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and RTI International and RTI International and RTI International and RTI International
• Keywords: age ; weighting ; NSDUH ; drug use ; nonresponse ; poststratification

Abstract

In the NSDUH weighting process, age-groups (12-17, 18-25,., 65+) are used for the nonresponse and postratification adjustments. Using 2004-2006 NSDUH data we found that the response rate decreases as age increases in the range of 12-25. Also the prevalence rates for drugs, alcohol and tobacco use increase almost linearly between ages 12-21, reaching a peak at age 21. Since the response rates and drug use prevalence rates change dramatically between the ages of 12 and 21, use of single years of age instead of age groups for both nonresponse and poststratification adjustments should reduce nonresponse bias as well as the variance of estimates. This paper explores the use of single years of ages between 12 and 25 in the 2006 NSDUH weighting process and discusses the prevalence rates and standard errors produced using the new set of weights.