NCHS releases public use data sets from the continuous NHANES in two year groupings (cycles). This release does not contain all of the data collected on persons who participated in the survey during those two years (9,965 persons). As more data becomes available it will be released on this webpage. These updates will be documented on this site. Data processing, methodologic and disclosure concerns are examples of the reasons why various data publicly available.
For a number of reasons, the release of data from the current NHANES will not be comparable to the approach used in previous NHANES studies. The data and documentation for the interview, laboratory and examination components of the survey will be released in numerous files to facilitate ease of use and access via the Internet. This will require the user to merge files to create analytic data sets. In addition, changes in the survey design and implementation necessitate analytic guidelines that differ from previous NHANES. Many of the past general analytic principles still apply, but with adjustments for the new survey design and taking into account more recent statistical practices and procedures. The guidelines will be revised on various occasions as new issues are raised and addressed by NCHS staff. Users are encouraged to regularly check this site for updates on available data, documentation and guidelines for use of the data.
NHANES data in this release are in SAS transport file format. To access this data in any version of SAS, use the XPORT engine. It is recommended that you copy the transport files to a permanent SAS library. For example, assuming you have downloaded the Body Measures exam data to the folder "C:\NHANES", you can use the following SAS code to copy the Body Measures Exam Data:
LIBNAME XP XPORT "C:\NHANES\BMX.XPT";
PROC COPY IN=XP OUT=SASUSER;
RUN;