Summary

In response to a congressional request, GAO examined the sampling plans of four national surveys, specifically their health and nutrition data on Hispanics.

GAO found that: (1) the surveys included too few minority group members to allow separate nationally projectable estimates of their health or nutritional condition; (2) to overcome this lack of data, two of the surveys oversampled Hispanics, and one plan was considering the use of oversampling in its survey; (3) although the Department of Health and Human Services' Vital Statistics Program's new standard birth and death registration forms included an Hispanic identifier, states were not required to use it; (4) the Vital Statistics Program provided training materials, technical assistance, and funding to states to help in the use of the forms and the production of data; and (5) 4 of the Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service's 13 programs produced national data on Hispanic participation, 3 programs had studies underway to aggregate Hispanic data, and the other 6 did not plan to compile participation data.