• Component Description
• Eligible Sample
• Interview Setting and Mode of Administration
• Quality Assurance & Quality Control
• Data Processing and Editing
• Analytic Notes
• Codebook
  • SEQN - Respondent sequence number
  • OCD150 - Type of work done last week
  • OCQ180 - Hours worked last week in total all jobs
  • OCQ200 - CHECK ITEM
  • OCQ210 - Usually work 35 or more hours per week
  • OCQ670 - Overall work schedule past 3 months
  • OCD383 - Main reason did not work last week

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

2017-March 2020 Data Documentation, Codebook, and Frequencies

Occupation (P_OCQ)

Data File: P_OCQ.xpt

First Published: September 2021

Last Revised: NA

Component Description

The 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, and made available to the public. Please refer to the Analytic Notes section for more details on the use of the data.

The Occupation Questionnaire (variable name prefix OCQ) section (questions OCD150 to OCQ670), which is part of the household interview, contains survey participant interview data on employment. The primary focus of the OCQ is the participant’s work within the previous week (i.e., the participant’s “Current Job”). The participant’s Current Job is defined as the main paid job worked within the last week, including work on a family farm. When an individual currently worked multiple jobs, the participant was asked to designate one main job for the interview. Topics covered in the OCQ section include:

• Current job status;
• The number of hours worked last week;
• Whether the participant usually works 35 or more hours per week;
• The main reason the participant did not work last week (if not currently working); and
• Overall work schedule during the past three months.

Eligible Sample

All survey participants 16 years and older in the NHANES 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic sample were eligible.

Interview Setting and Mode of Administration

These questions were asked, in the home, by trained interviewers using the Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) system.

Persons 16 years of age and older and emancipated minors were interviewed directly. A proxy provided information for participants who were under 16 years of age and for those who could not answer the questions themselves.

The NHANES 2017-2018 and 2019-2020 occupation questionnaires are available on the NHANES website.

Quality Assurance & Quality Control

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. During the 2017-2018 and 2019-2020 data collection cycles, periodic QC checks were performed on the OCQ data being collected; and interviewer-specific feedback and retraining was performed as appropriate.

Data Processing and Editing

Questionnaire interview responses were entered into a tablet and then uploaded into a computerized database in the same manner as other sections of the Survey Participant Questionnaire. The data were then edited for completeness, consistency, and illogical values.

To decrease the risk of disclosure, additional “bottom” and “top” summary codes were implemented for one variable in the 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic data:

• OCQ180 (hours worked last week): Responses 5 hours or less were re-coded as “5” in the public use file, responses 80 hours or more were re-coded as "80."

Analytic Notes

The COVID-19 pandemic required suspension of NHANES 2019-2020 field operations in March 2020 after data was 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 demographic data file should be used to calculate estimates from the combined cycles. The 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.

In general, analysts are advised to carefully review the question wording in the OCQ codebook to make sure they understand question skip patterns and the definitions employed for occupation-related variables.

Please note that there was a slight change to the question wording for OCQ180 for the 2019-2020 survey cycle. In addition, some of the response options for the question on the main reason of not being at work in the last week, which is collected among survey participants that reported not currently working at a job or business, changed between the 2017-2018 and 2019-2020 survey cycles. To make data from the two survey cycles compatible, the derived variable OCD383 was created with incompatible response options being collapsed into an “Unable to work for health reasons/Disabled” or an “Other” category.

The OCQ data were collected as part of the household questionnaire and, therefore, the full sample NHANES interview weights WTINTPRP should be used for statistical analysis. However, if the OCQ data are merged with the MEC exam or laboratory data, then the NHANES examination sample weights WTMECPRP 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.

Codebook and Frequencies