Alternate Title:  N-SSATS, Concatenated, 1997 to 2010

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Health and Human Services. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality

Summary:

Series: National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) Series

• These data are freely available.

• This study is maintained and distributed by the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA). SAMHDA is supported by the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ), formerly the Office of Applied Studies.

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United States Department of Health and Human Services. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) -- Concatenated, 1997 to 2010. ICPSR28544-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2012-06-07. doi:10.3886/ICPSR28544.v2

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR28544.v2

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This survey was funded by:

• United States Department of Health and Human Services. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality

Subject Terms:   alcohol abuse, drug abuse, drug treatment, health care services, HIV, intervention, substance abuse, substance abuse treatment, treatment facilities, treatment programs

Smallest Geographic Unit:   Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA)

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 1997--1998
• 2000
• 2002--2010

Date of Collection:  

• 1997-10-01--1998-03-31
• 1998-10-01--1999-03-31
• 2000-10-01--2001-04-30
• 2002-03-29--2002-10-01
• 2003-03-31--2003-10-01
• 2004-03-31--2004-10-01
• 2005-03-31--2005-10-01
• 2006-03-31--2006-10-03
• 2007-03-30--2007-10-17
• 2008-03-31--2008-10-17
• 2009-03-31--2009-10-17
• 2010-03-31--2010-10-18

Unit of Observation:   facility

Universe:  

This concatenated file includes 159,870 records representing 30,309 individual treatment facilities. The universe for N-SSATS includes all active treatment facilities on SAMHSA's I-SATS at a point six weeks before the survey reference date. Facilities added by State substance abuse agencies or through annual frame enhancement or discovered during the first three weeks of the survey are also included in the survey universe for each year.

The reference date for each year is:

Data Types:   survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality was formerly named the Office of Applied Studies. The yearly N-SSATS data collected from 1997 to 2009 were collected under the Office of Applied Studies. In 2010 data began to be collected under the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality.

Data were collected by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., Princeton, NJ, and prepared for release by Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc., Arlington, VA.

N-SSATS is a point-prevalence survey. It provides information on the substance abuse treatment system and its clients on the reference date. Client counts do not represent annual totals. Rather, N-SSATS provides a "snapshot" of substance abuse treatment facilities and clients on an average day.

N-SSATS collects data about facilities, not individual clients. Data on clients represent an aggregate of clients in treatment for each reporting facility.

N-SSATS attempts to obtain responses from all known facilities that provide substance abuse treatment, but it is a voluntary survey. There is no adjustment for facility nonresponse.

This is a concatenated file of the individual N-SSATS files. The 2008 survey was selected as the "base" year. The concatenated file includes equivalent variables from prior years. If an equivalent variable (i.e., with similar question wording) was not part of an earlier survey, the variable was constructed from the existing questions where possible. If an equivalent variable did not exist or could not be constructed, variables expressing a similar concept or topic were included.

The question text for most variables is based on the 2008 questionnaire. The question text for variables that have no equivalent in the 2008 survey was taken from the most recent questionnaire that included the variable. As question wording and definitions may vary slightly from year to year, the individual questionnaires should be consulted in any analysis.

General topics and data items that were discontinued before the 2008 survey are not included in the concatenated data set. The majority of these discontinuations occurred at the time of the major survey redesign prior to the 2000 survey. Discontinued data items were those where data reported was found to be unreliable and include facility revenue, percent of population representing specific groups, unduplicated client counts, wait list information, managed care ownership, and parent/affiliate relationships. Please see Table 4 of the PDF codebook for a crosswalk of the variables included in each survey year.

The concatenated file includes the facilities in the N-SSATS Annual Report and public use files. Rules for the inclusion of facilities in the data file vary slightly. In 1997 only, facilities treating only DUI/DWI clients were inelgible to complete the survey. From 2000 on, non-state approved solo practitioners, and facilities where all clients were incarcerated were excluded.

In 1997, 1998, and 2000 the survey reference date was October 1. The reference date was changed to the last business day in March beginning with the 2002 survey. This change was made to help increase the timeliness of responses by facilities. As a result, no data were collected for 2001.

In 2002, a Web option for survey response was introduced and used by 20 percent of responding facilities. By 2010, this had increased to 61 percent.

Sample:   The Inventory of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (I-SATS; formerly called the National Master Facility Inventory (NMFI)) provides the sampling frame for N-SSATS. Two categories of treatment facilities in I-SATS may be distinguished. The largest group of facilities (about 80 percent) include those that are licensed, certified, or otherwise approved by the state substance abuse agency to provide substance abuse treatment. The second group represents SAMHSA's effort in recent years to make the I-SATS as comprehensive as possible by including treatment facilities that state substance abuse agencies, for a variety of reasons, do not license or certify. Many of these facilities are private for-profit, small group practices, or hospital-based programs.

Mode of Data Collection:   mail questionnaire, telephone interview, web-based survey

Response Rates:   Detailed response rates by year are provided in the PDF codebook. N-SSATS obtained an average response rate of 94 percent in the survey years 1997 through 2010.

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Performed consistency checks.
• Created variable labels and/or value labels.
• Standardized missing values.
• Created online analysis version with question text.
• Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Original ICPSR Release:  2011-06-01

Version History:

• 2012-06-07 Added 2010 data to the N-SSATS concatenated data file.

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