National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2005. General Principles and Procedures for Editing Drug Use Data in the 2005 NSDUH Computer-Assisted Interview

摘要

This report presents information from the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual survey of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States aged 12 years old or older. Prior to 2002, the survey was called the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). The 1999 survey marked the transition from data collection based on paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI) to computer-assisted interviewing (CAI). The 2005 NSDUH data were collected using CAI. The CAI instrument allowed a private mode of data collection for respondents to answer questions pertaining to drug use and other sensitive topics. This selfadministration was accomplished through use of audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI), in which respondents could read the questions on the computer screen and enter their responses directly into the laptop computer. All respondents also were encouraged to listen to an audio recording of the questions on headphones and then enter their answers into the computer. This prevented interviewers (or others in the household) from knowing what questions the respondents were being asked and how they were answering. This feature of ACASI was especially useful for respondents with limited reading ability because they could listen to the questions instead of having to read them. For demographic questions, computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) was used; interviewers read the questions and respondents gave their answers aloud to the interviewers, who then entered the responses into the computer. The CAI instrument was divided into core and noncore sections. Core sections, such as key demographic characteristics and drug use prevalence questions, were designed to stay relatively constant from 1 year to the next in order to permit measurement of trends in drug use. In contrast, the content of noncore sections could change considerably across years to measure new topics of interest or to rotate certain topics in or out of the interview. In noncore sections, therefore, questions or entire modules could be added or deleted, or the wording of existing questions could change from 1 year to the next. This report provides documentation on how the basic drug use prevalence data were edited from the 2005 CAI instrument. The overall purpose of any editing of the 2005 NSDUH CAI data was to provide the most accurate information possible about drug use and related issues among U.S. residents aged 12 or older.