Twenty-five years of health surveys: does more data mean better data?

Major increases in the resources devoted to the collection of health-related data and advances in survey methodology may be offset by more nonresponse and coverage bias resulting from privacy concerns, technological changes, and an increasingly complex health care environment. Hence, it is unclear whether policymakers today are basing their decisions on data that are of higher or even the same quality as those collected twenty-five years ago. We offer several recommendations for improving data quality, including changes related to Office of Management and Budget review, broad reexamination of the federal health survey portfolio, and greater investment in survey methods research.