Health Reform Monitoring Survey, United States, First Quarter 2020 (ICPSR 38110)
Version Date: Feb 10, 2022 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
John Holahan, Urban Institute;
Michael Karpman, Urban Institute
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38110.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
In January 2013, the Urban Institute launched the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS), a survey of the nonelderly population, to explore the value of cutting-edge, Internet-based survey methods to monitor the Affordable Care Act (ACA) before data from federal government surveys are available. Topics covered by the 19th round of the survey (first quarter 2020) include self-reported health status, health insurance coverage, access to health care, trust in the health care system, use of public benefits, material hardship, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional information collected by the survey includes age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, education, race and ethnicity, United States citizenship, housing type, home ownership, internet access, income, and employment status.
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Funding View help for Funding
Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
Census region
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
ICPSR restricted certain variables from general dissemination for reasons of confidentiality. Users interested in obtaining the restricted data must complete a restricted data use agreement with ICPSR, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research. Apply for access to the restricted data via the ICPSR restricted data contract portal which can be accessed on the study home page.
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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The principal investigators excluded variable Q7_F for disclosure risk.
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Previous public use files contained indicators for insured and uninsured status based on the Urban Institute's coverage editing process. These variables are not included in the 2020 public use file because of a change in the editing process for respondents who reported having health insurance but did not report a specific coverage type and who did not enroll in a health plan through the Marketplace. Because of this change, estimates using the updated coverage status indicators in 2020 would not be directly comparable to estimates using the indicators from the public use files for the previous rounds of the survey.
- The public-use and restricted-use data files are exactly the same with the exception of the variable PPREG4. The valid data for this variable has been set to missing in the public-use version of the data set. Everything else (data, labels, open-ended responses) will be the same between the public-use and restricted-use versions. Please review the processing notes at the front of each codebook for additional information regarding the data.
- More information about this study is available on the HRMS website.
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Demographic variables are provided by the KnowledgePanel.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
This study was conducted to provide information on health insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, health care affordability, and self-reported health status, as well as timely data on important implementation issues under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Study Design View help for Study Design
The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) provides data on health insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, health care affordability, and self-reported health status. Beginning in the second quarter of 2013, each round of the HRMS also contains topical questions focusing on timely ACA policy issues. In the first quarter of 2015, the HRMS shifted from a quarterly fielding schedule to a semiannual schedule.
Sample View help for Sample
For each HRMS round, a stratified random sample of adults ages 18-64 is drawn from the Knowledge Panel, a probability-based, nationally representative Internet panel maintained by Ipsos. The approximately 55,000 adults in the panel include households with and without Internet access. Panel members are recruited from an address-based sample frame derived from the United States Postal Service Delivery Sequence File, which covers 97 percent of United States households. The 2020 HRMS sample includes 9,032 nonelderly adults, including oversamples of low-and moderate-income adults by race and ethnicity and an oversample of adults ages 18 to 29.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Household population aged 18-64
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
The variables include original survey questions, household demographic profile data, and constructed variables which can be used to link panel members who participated in multiple rounds.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
The cumulative response rate for the quarter 1 2020 HRMS is 3.6 percent.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2022-02-10
Version History View help for Version History
2022-02-10 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:
- Created online analysis version with question text.
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Weight View help for Weight
The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) weights reflect the probability of sample selection from the KnowledgePanel and post-stratification to the characteristics of nonelderly adults in the United States based on benchmarks from the Current Population Survey and American Community Survey. Variables used in the post-stratification weighting of the KnowledgePanel and the post stratification weighting of the HRMS include sex, age, race and ethnicity, primary language, education, presence of children in households, household income, family income as a percentage of federal poverty levels (FPL), homeownership status, internet access, urban or rural status, state group, and census region. In January 2017, all rounds of the HRMS were reweighted due to a change in the Current Population Survey question on Internet access that was being used to create benchmarks for the construction of the post stratification weights.
HideNotes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.

This study is maintained and distributed by the Health and Medical Care Archive (HMCA). HMCA is the official data archive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.