Import the NHANES SAS XPT files directly from the CDC website with just the XPT file’s URL, 2.

In this short script, you’ll see how to 1. If you tried to download the FOLATE_G file, CDC’s website will give their version of a 404 error and Stata will stop the. For example, the 2011-2012 Folate lab results were withdrawn February 2018. If the source data files are removed for inaccuracies, the file won’t run and you’ll be prompted to investigate. do file, it’ll grab the freshest data files available. If the source files are updated by the CDC, no worry! Every time you run this. This means that you don’t have to worry about maintaining your personal database of NHANES files. do file below shows you how easy it is to download just the needed files on the fly then do some simple analyses. I love that Stata will download datasets for you with just a URL. Leverage Stata’s internet connectivity to make NHANES analyses easy Re-downloading all of the many files every time you want to do a project is a big headache. (I strongly recommend subscribing the the NHANES Listserv to get real-time updates.) If you have NHANES files saved locally from 2-3 years ago, there’s a reasonable chance that you are using outdated databases, which could yield some false conclusions. Files may be updated for errors or removed entirely without you knowing about it. To make this data management task slightly more complex, the CDC sporadically publishes interval updates of the source data files on their website. Plus, all of the files are in SAS XPT format so you have to download, import, save, and merge before you can even think about starting an analysis. Manipulating NHANES data is challenging for beginners because of the sheer quantity of individual files and requirement for weighting. The best part? You can download almost all of NHANES data from the CDC website right now for free. Manuscripts using NHANES data have been published across the spectrum of medical journals, all the way up to NEJM. A few of these years are linked to National Death Index data, so you can assess risk factors at the time of the survey and use time-to-event mortality data to identify novel risk factors for death.

For the past ~18 years it sampled different communities across the US in 2 year continuous cycles. NHANES is a robust, nationally-representative cross-sectional study.

Stata 13 datasets