Affiliations: [a] National Center for Health Services Research and
Health Care Technology Assessment, 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 18A–55, Rockville, MD
20857, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and no official
endorsement by the Department of Health and Human Services or the National
Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology Assessment is
intended or should be inferred. The authors wish to thank Ms. Jane Faulman
of Social and Scientific Systems, Inc. for her invaluable programming
support.
Abstract: The Household Component of the National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES) was
designed to provide unbiased national estimates of the health care utilization,
expenditures, sources of payment and health insurance coverage for the U.S.
civilian noninstitutionalized population. The same panel of households were
contacted four times over the course of the survey to obtain data on their
health care experience for 1987. Furthermore, an additional screening interview
was conducted in the fall of 1986 to permit the oversampling of population
subgroups of particular health policy interest: blacks, Hispanics, the poor and
near poor, the elderly, and the functionally impaired. Due to the panel design
of the survey, the NMES experienced two distinct forms of nonresponse: complete
nonresponse and partial nonresponse, where sample participants did not respond
for their entire period of sample eligibility. In this paper, the
characteristics of the NMES part-year respondents are contrasted with those of
the complete respondents. The investigation includes an analysis of the effects
of alternative nonresponse adjustment strategies for compensating for partial
nonresponse.
