Description

For males, CANPROSTYRC indicates whether the person had prostate cancer in the past year. This variable is created with supplemental programming by the IPUMS NHIS staff from the pre-1997 condition records. For general information about IHIS variables (such as CANPROSTYRC) created from the pre-1997 condition records, see the User Note on Condition Records and Condition Variables.

Defining Prostate Cancer Records and Identifying Persons with Prostate Cancer

For all available years, males who were asked a direct question about having prostate cancer and who have a chronic prostate cancer condition record are given a "Yes" code for CANPROSTYRC. Males who were asked a direct question about having lung cancer but do not have a chronic prostate cancer record are given a code of "No." Persons who were not asked a direct question about lung cancer, or for whom it is unknown whether they were asked such a question, are given a code of "NIU" (not in universe), regardless of whether they have a chronic prostate cancer record.

For all available years (1984 to 1996), chronic prostate cancer records were defined as those condition records with a code of "423" ("Malignant neoplasms of prostate") in the variable C1CONDRC in the original NHIS public use files. This condition code value comes from NCHS's Diagnostic Recode C: Chronic Conditions and Impairments.

Weights
For all available years (1984-1996), CANPROSTYRC should be weighted with CONDWT4.

Related Lung Cancer Variables
The nearest equivalent of CANPROSTYRC for 1997 forward is CNPROS (Ever had cancer: Prostate). However, researchers should use caution when comparing prevalence estimates derived from these two variables, as the reference period and manner of collecting information about prostate cancer differs greatly between the two. CANPROSTYRC was created by recoding condition records that were generated in response to several different survey questions about health problems underlying disability, sick days, or contacts with health care practitioners in the past year. CNPROS, by contrast, is based on a direct question about whether the person ever had the condition lung cancer.

Comparability

There are no comparability issues with CANPROSTYRC.

Universe

Availability

• 1984-1996

Weights

• 1984-1996 : CONDWT4