Data Collection and Research Using the National Center for Health Statistics’ Research and Development Survey (RANDS)

• Activity Number: 105 - Advances in Statistical Methods and Models for Real-Time Surveys
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 8, 2022 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Paul Joseph Scanlon*
• Companies: National Center for Health Statistics
• Keywords: commercial panels; web panels; official statistics; measurement error; data dissemination

Abstract

As the United States’ principal health statistics agency the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is responsible for not only collecting and disseminating timely, high-quality data about the country’s health characteristics, but also advancing and refining new and innovative data collection methodologies. To this end, in 2015 NCHS established the Research and Development Survey (RANDS) as its methodological research survey system. Using commercial panels to collect survey data, RANDS originally had two main purposes: 1) to study the properties of commercial panels, and 2) to use survey panels to conduct measurement error research and develop new methods and approaches to study non-sampling error. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting impacts on NCHS’ legacy survey systems, a third objective was added: releasing “real time” data about emergent public health issues. This presentation will discuss these three objectives and how NCHS has approached areas including program flexibility, data collection and processing, data quality, and dissemination when using commercial panels as survey sources.