The Assessment of Immigration Status in Health Research

No. 127. Draft Version. The Assessment of Immigration Status in Health Research. 140 pp. (PHS) 99-1327. GPO stock number and price forthcoming.
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The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and the U.S. Bureau of the Census are collaborating on a research project to develop or modify survey questions designed to assess the impact of changes in health and welfare programs. This report on survey methods used to ascertain immigration status, funded by ASPE, is one of the components of this collaboration.

NCHS and ASPE commissioned this report for the purpose of summarizing current methodologies as well as identifying areas where further research is needed. Because health and welfare public benefits are limited to certain immigrant statuses, standard sets of questions that can distinguish between relevant groups need to be identified and evaluated according to their specificity, reliability, validity and field performance under varying study conditions. The aim is to develop a question battery that can be used to assess the unmet needs and health outcomes of immigrant populations where immigration status is appropriately defined.

Discussion Topics Include:

A review of the literature on the use of immigration status survey questions;

The identification of questions that can distinguish between different, relevantly defined immigrant statuses;

An assessment of questionnaire field performance and reliability; and

Recommendations for developing question sets to address specific analytic issues.

Keywords: Immigrants, Immigration, Health status, Health care

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007