National health interview survey

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), in collaboration with the National Institute on Aging (NIA), is conducting the Longitudinal Study of Aging (LSOA). The LSOA is an extension of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) of 1984, following its sample of 16,148 noninstitutionalized elderly people (55 years and over) living in the United States. The LSOA is designed to (a) provide mortality rates by demographic, social, economic, and health characteristics that are not available from the vital statistics system, (b) measure change in the functional status and living arrangements of older people, and (c) provide measures of health care use. It is also designed to describe the continuum from functionally independent living in the community through dependence, possible institutionalization, and finally death. This release of the LSOA data concerns a sample of the NHIS Supplement on Aging (SOA) respondents aged 70 and over at the time of their 1984 interviews. The data include 1986 reinterviews, National Death Index matches, and 1987 interviews with contact persons named by decedents, as well as selected variables from the 1984 NHIS core questionnaire and its two suppleme