Design and operation of the National Survey of Early Childhood Health, 2000.

OBJECTIVES

This report presents the development, plan, and operation of the National Survey of Early Childhood Health, a module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This survey was designed to assess parents' perceptions of their children's pediatric care. In addition, data were collected that can be used to examine relationships between the promotion of health in the pediatric office and promotion of health in the home. Funding for the survey was provided by The Gerber Foundation, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration. The UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities contributed to the design of the study and the questionnaire.

METHODS

A national random-digit-dialed (RDD) sample of households with children 4-35 months of age was selected. The study included an oversample of households having an eligible black non-Hispanic or Hispanic child. In households with more than one eligible child, one was randomly selected to be the subject of the interview. The respondent was the parent or guardian who was most responsible for the child's health care. A computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system was used to collect the data.

RESULTS

A total of 2,068 interviews were completed during the first half of 2000. The response rate was 65.6%. A data file has been released that contains demographic information on the focal child and respondent, substantive health and health-related data, and sampling weights. Estimates based on the sampling weights generalize to the entire U.S. population of children 4-35 months of age.