Skip to main content

Survey Data Finder

button, click to jump to the tool

Introducing the Interactive “Survey Data Finder” Tool

Amid uncertainty about the future availability of federal health survey data, SHADAC undertook our State Alternatives for Health Data Continuity project in 2025. As part of this effort, we conducted a data scan to inventory federal health-related surveys and reviewed their detailed documentation to catalogue the main health topic domains covered by each survey.

We turned the results of that work into an interactive tool, our “Survey Data Finder.” It is designed to help data users identify where they may be able to obtain data needed for any number of public health and health policy purposes, including research, policy analysis, advocacy, or other uses. Users can select surveys of interest via the pull-down menu, and the accompanying table lists the health domains covered by each survey. 

The tool focuses exclusively on individual- and household-level surveys. Though the federal government conducts important health-related surveys of other types of respondents, such as employers (about health insurance offerings) and health care providers, those are designed to answer different types of questions than the surveys in this tool. Additionally, this tool is limited to surveys that focus specifically on health, or, in some cases, broader surveys that provide landmark data on critical health topics. This tool does not include surveys unless they have a substantial or uniquely important health element, even if they may incidentally ask a few health questions.

One way that users could employ the tool is for contingency planning. For instance, people might use the tool to assess whether alternative federal surveys could fill data gaps in the event that the federal government were to reduce its investment in a survey they normally use (e.g., eliminating a survey, reducing its frequency, or removing certain questions). The tool allows people to explore potential alternative data sources in further detail, to determine whether they might serve as a practical alternative, or to assess whether other strategies, such primary data collection, might be needed to fill data gaps.

Using the Data Gaps Column

A unique feature of the “Survey Data Finder” tool is the “Data Gaps” column, which can be used to identify whether there are any gaps in health domains among the surveys that a user selects with the pull-down menu. When selecting all of the surveys, no flags appear in the data gap column. But as a user de-selects more and more surveys from the pull-down menu, additional data gaps will be flagged—health domains that are not included in the selected surveys. 

For instance, if a user were to select the American Community Survey, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, and the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC), the data gap column would flag four health domains as unavailable in those surveys; however, if a user then de-selected the BRFSS, simulating what might happen if that survey were discontinued, the number of health domains flagged for data gaps in the ACS and CPS-ASEC would more than triple to 13.

Tutorial Video: How to Use the Survey Data Finder

 

 

Survey Summaries

We have created an accompanying blog that details brief summaries of each of the surveys included in the Survey Data Finder tool. This is to help users better understand the main focus and specifics that may make one survey particularly well-suited to certain users in comparison to others.

Suggestions and Feedback

Contact us with your suggestions: Do you know a federal health-related survey that you think we should consider adding to our tool? Or do you believe there might be a mistake in our Survey Data Finder tool? Please reach out to us at [email protected].