The development and implementation of the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, the National Survey of American Life, and the National Latino and Asian American Survey

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the development and implementation of the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES): the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), the National Survey of American Life (NSAL), and the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS). It describes the instrument development and testing phases, the development of training and other project materials, interviewer recruitment and training activities, and data collection procedures and outcomes. The last section offers recommendations for other researchers who undertake similar studies and who might benefit from the experiences learned in the development and operation of NCS-R, NSAL and NLAAS.

Understanding differences in past year psychiatric disorders for Latinos living in the US

“…The three-item family support scale assesses respondents' ability to rely on relatives by asking how often they talk on the telephone and how much they can open up to relatives (α=0.71). Family burden, a twoitem measure, captures frequency of demands and arguments with relatives or children, developed by Kessler and colleagues (Pennell et al, 2004). The family cultural conflict scale consists of five items measuring respondents' frequency of cultural and intergenerational conflict with families (e.g., family interference with personal goals, arguments with family members due to different belief systems) (α=0.91).…”

“…The Institutional Review Board Committees of the Cambridge Health Alliance, the University of Washington, and the University of Michigan approved all recruitment, consent, and interviewing procedures. A detailed description of the NLAAS data collection procedures are described elsewhere (Pennell et al, 2004).…”

Acculturation and Self-Rated Health among Latino and Asian Immigrants to the United States

“…All interviewers were bilingual, and interviews were conducted in person and in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese (either Mandarin or Cantonese), or Tagalog. The overall response rate was 65.6 percent for Asian Americans and 75.5 percent for Latinos (see Heeringa et al 2004 andPennell et al 2004 for detailed sampling descriptions). When weighted, the NLAAS includes a nationally representative sample of 4,649 adults, including 2,554 Latinos (including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latino groups) and 2,095 Asian Americans (including Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, and other Asian groups).…”

“…The ways in which immigrant health profiles change with shifts in acculturation is of increasing interest to scholars and policy makers in the United States, but little is known about the mechanisms that may link acculturation and self-rated health, particularly for Asians. Utilizing the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) and its data on foreign-born Latinos (N = 1,199) and Asians (N = 1,323) (Pennell et al 2004), we investigate and compare the associations between acculturation and self-rated health for immigrants to the United States from six major ethnic subgroups (Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican). Using comprehensive measures of acculturation, we demonstrate that across ethnic groups, and despite the widely varying contexts of the sending countries and receiving communities, native-language dominance is associated with worse self-rated health relative to bilingualism, and measures of lower acculturation-coethnic ties and remittances-are associated with better self-rated health; and moreover, these associations are only partially mediated by socioeconomic status, and not mediated by acculturative stress, discrimination, social support, or health behaviors.…”

Prevalence and correlates of eating disorders in Latinos in the United States

“…The Institutional Review Board Committees of all participating institutions approved all study procedures. 18 …”