National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Quality Assessment of the 2002 to 2013 NSDUH Public Use Files [Internet]

Excerpt

Background: On an annual basis, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) collects the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) and subsequently produces NSDUH public use files (PUFs) and restricted-use files (RUFs). The objective of this methodological report is to inform researchers that NSDUH's PUFs maintain high data quality and comparability with NSDUH's restricted-use files (RUFs).

Method: NSDUH PUF data quality assessment and comparability with the NSDUH RUFs were achieved by performing multiple comparisons of key estimates produced from the two sets of 2002 to 2013 data files based on about 200 tables of substance use and mental health estimates and their respective standard errors.

Results: Comparisons between the individual 12 years (i.e., 2002 to 2013) of the PUF estimates and RUF estimates indicated that the NSDUH PUFs provide comparable estimates and standard errors for substance use and mental health outcomes and consistent analytic results can be expected between the two types of files even when the actual numbers are different.

Conclusion: NSDUH's PUFs can be used to obtain reliable estimates for policymakers and to track substance use prevalence or rates of mental health conditions over time.