Original article
An assessment of the effect of data collection setting on the prevalence of health risk behaviors among adolescents

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00343-9Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose: To examine the effect of data collection setting on the prevalence of priority health risk behaviors among adolescents.

Methods: Analyses were conducted using data from two national probability surveys of adolescents, the 1993 national school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and the 1992 household-based National Health Interview Survey (NHIS/YRBS). Forty-two items were worded identically on both surveys.

Results: Thirty-nine of the 42 identically worded items (93%) showed that the YRBS produced estimates indicating higher risk than the NHIS. Twenty-four of these comparisons yielded statistically significant differences. The prevalence estimates affected most were those for behaviors that are either illegal or socially stigmatized.

Conclusions: School-based surveys produce higher prevalence estimates for adolescent health risk behaviors than do household-based surveys. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and both can play a role in assessing these behaviors.

Section snippets

Sampling

Both the 1992 NHIS/YRBS and the 1993 national school-based YRBS are part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which periodically measures the prevalence of priority health risk behaviors among adolescents. The 1992 NHIS was conducted among a representative sample of the civilian non-institutionalized U.S. population using a multistage cluster-area probability design of approximately 120,000 persons representing 49,000

Results

As can be seen in Table 1, the demographic characteristics of each survey subgroup do not differ significantly. Both samples contained about equal percentages of males and females and had similar grade, age, and race/ethnicity distributions, although the sample of students in the school-based survey was slightly older and more likely to be white.

Discussion

This study documents the importance of data collection setting on the prevalence of health risk behaviors among high school students. Of the 42 comparisons, 39 showed that the 1993 YRBS produced estimates indicating higher risk (though not always statistically higher) than the 1992 NHIS/YRBS. Twenty-four comparisons showed that the YRBS estimates were statistically higher than the NHIS/YRBS estimates. In only one instance, fruit and vegetable consumption, did the NHIS/YRBS estimate indicate

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