Data Source Overview
National Comorbidity Survey: Baseline (NCS-1), 1990-1992
Study Summary
The National Comorbidity Survey: Baseline (NCS-1) was a collaborative epidemiologic investigation designed to study the prevalence and correlates of DSM III-R disorders and patterns and correlates of service utilization for these disorders. The NCS-1 was the first survey to administer a structured psychiatric interview to a nationally representative sample. The survey was carried out in the early 1990s with a household sample of over 8,000 respondents. Subsamples of the original respondents completed the NCS-1 Part II survey and Tobacco Use Supplement. Diagnoses were based on a modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (the UM-CIDI), which was developed at the University of Michigan for the NCS-1. Drugs covered by this survey include alcohol, tobacco, sedatives, stimulants, tranquilizers, analgesics, inhalants, marijuana/hashish, cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, nonmedical use of prescription drugs, and polysubstance use. Other items include demographic characteristics, personal and family history of substance use and abuse, substance abuse treatment, data on drug use including recency, frequency, and age at first use, problems resulting from the use of drugs, personal and family history of psychiatric problems, mental health treatment, symptoms of psychiatric disorders, mental health status, HIV risk behaviors, and physical health status.
Citation
Kessler, Ronald C. National Comorbidity Survey: Baseline (NCS-1), 1990-1992. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2008-09-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06693.v6
Data Description
The data for the NCS-1 survey is publically availble without use restriction on the website of the University of Michigan Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/
Total Records: 8,098
Total Columns: 2,954
The fields within the NCS-1 data have coded headers and all response values are translated to integers, including 'n/a', 'don't know' and 'inappropriate' responses. Valid values and integer ranges for each field could be translated through the use of the study code book. As a PDF, the code book is over 1,800 pages. All code book entries are also available via the web on the ICPSR website and served a source for scraping the ncessary results.
