Description

DV12KNOW indicates, for all sample persons, if the number of times the respondent saw or talked to a medical doctor in past 12 months, excluding times when the respondent was an inpatient in a hospital, was known. The term "talked to" mostly refers to phone calls with doctors. This is a generated variable based on whether or not the respondent could provide dates for reported doctor visits in the past 2 weeks. To clarify, the survey included probe questions to determine the exact dates for visits (or phone calls) during the past 2 weeks to ensure these visits in fact occurred in the 2-week reference period. Any unknown dates, or dates outside the 2-week reference period were counted in the doctor contact record but were not used to develop the generated variable "estimated" number of visits. Because exact dates could not be determined, they were assigned the value of "unknown" in the NHIS record. The IPUMS NHIS recoded DV12KNOW to reflect the values reported in DV12 (number of doctor visits in the past 12 months). That is, for all respondents who had values other than zero for DV12, these are coded as "known" in the IHIS recode ("1").

Comparability

This variable is completely comparable for 1969 to 1981.

From 1982 forward, DV12KNOW does not exist because of changes in editing procedures, as described in the Questionnaires from the National Health Interview Survey, 1980-84 Programs and Collection Procedures, Series 1 (No. 24) . As mentioned above, from 1969 to 1981, any unknown dates, or dates outside the 2-week reference period were counted in the doctor contact record but were not used to develop the generated variable "estimated" number of visits. From 1982 forward, any visits that were with unknown dates were either assigned to either "past 2 weeks, don't know when" or deleted from the file if outside the reference period. According to the Procedures (No. 24) report, the result of this change was an increase in the average number of physician contacts per person per year, from 4.6 to 5.2 visits from 1981 to 1982.

Universe

Availability

• 1969-1981

Weights

• 1969-1981 : PERWEIGHT