| Summary: | BACKGROUND: The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) collects nationally representative estimates of substance use and mental health issues. Combining auxiliary data with NSDUH data provides insights that NSDUH data alone cannot provide. However, merging auxiliary data to the NSDUH requires access to linking variables that are only available on the NSDUH restricted-use file. METHOD: This report describes the analytic potential of merging NSDUH data with auxiliary data, identifies potential sources of auxiliary data, statistical considerations when merging and analyzing the data, and how to access restricted-use NSDUH data. RESULTS: Although there are multiple ways to merge auxiliary data with NSDUH data, a common method is to use a geographic identifier that is in both data sets. The report categorized types of auxiliary data by whether the data sets were nationally representative with full substate coverage and nationally representative with limited substate coverage. CONCLUSION: The appropriate choice of the auxiliary data set depends on the purpose of the analysis
|
|---|