he NHANES program suspended field operations in March 2020 due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As a result, data collection for the NHANES 2019-2020 cycle was not completed and the collected data are not nationally representative. Therefore, data collected from 2019 to March 2020 were combined with data from the NHANES 2017-2018 cycle to form a nationally representative sample of NHANES 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic data. These data are available to the public. Please refer to the Analytic Notes section for more details on the use of the data.
The Current Health Status section (variable name prefix HSQ) provides personal interview data on HIV testing.
Study participants aged 16 years of age and older in the NHANES 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic sample were eligible.
The current health status questionnaire was done in the Mobile Examination Center (MEC), by trained interviewers, using the Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) system. It was conducted by a MEC interviewer, during the MEC Interview, for participants 16 and older . For details on the administration of the HSQ, refer to the NHANES 2017-2018 and 2019-2020 MEC Interviewers Procedures Manuals on the NHANES website.
The CAPI system is programmed with built-in consistency checks to reduce data entry errors. CAPI also uses online help screens to assist interviewers in defining key terms used in the questionnaire.
All of the data was reviewed for accuracy and completeness.
Frequency counts were verified during the preparation of the file.
The COVID-19 pandemic required suspension of NHANES 2019-2020 field operations in March 2020 after data were collected in 18 of the 30 survey locations in the 2019-2020 sample. Data collection was cancelled for the remaining 12 locations. Because the collected data from 18 locations were not nationally representative, these data were combined with data from the previous cycle (2017-2018) to create a 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic data file. A special weighting process was applied to the 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic data file. The resulting sample weights in the present file should be used to calculate estimates from the combined cycles. These sample weights are not appropriate for independent analyses of the 2019-2020 data and will not yield nationally representative results for either the 2017-2018 data alone or the 2019-March 2020 data alone. Please refer to the NHANES website for additional information for the NHANES 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic data, and for the previous 2017-2018 public use data file with specific weights for that 2-year cycle.
Exam sample weights should be used for analyses. Please refer to the NHANES Analytic Guidelines and the on-line NHANES Tutorial for further details on the use of sample weights and other analytic issues.
| Code or Value | Value Description | Count | Cumulative | Skip to Item |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yes | 3376 | 3376 | |
| 2 | No | 5203 | 8579 | |
| 7 | Refused | 0 | 8579 | |
| 9 | Don't know | 262 | 8841 | |
| . | Missing | 604 | 9445 |