RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SURVEY (RANDS) 3 
PUBLIC USE DATA RELEASE

WARNING! DATA USE RESTRICTIONS
Read Carefully Before Using NCHS Public Use Survey Data

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention (CDC), conducts statistical and epidemiological activities under the authority 
granted by the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. § 242k). NCHS survey data are protected 
by Federal confidentiality laws including Section 308(d) Public Health Service Act 
[42 U.S.C. 242m(d)] and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency 
Act or CIPSEA [Pub. L. No. 115-435, 132 Stat. 5529 § 302]. These confidentiality laws state 
the data collected by NCHS may be used only for statistical reporting and analysis. Any effort 
to determine the identity of individuals and establishments violates the assurances of 
confidentiality provided by federal law. 

Terms and Conditions
NCHS does all it can to assure that the identity of individuals and establishments cannot 
be disclosed. All direct identifiers, as well as any characteristics that might lead to 
identification, are omitted from the dataset. Any intentional identification or disclosure 
of an individual or establishment violates the assurances of confidentiality given to the 
providers of the information. Therefore, users will: 

1. Use the data in this dataset for statistical reporting and analysis only. 

2. Make no attempt to learn the identity of any person or establishment included in these data.

3. Not link this dataset with individually identifiable data from other NCHS or non-NCHS datasets. 

4. Not engage in any efforts to assess disclosure methodologies applied to protect individuals 
and establishments or any research on methods of re-identification of individuals and establishments.

By using these data you signify your agreement to comply with the above-stated statutorily 
based requirements.

Sanctions for Violating NCHS Data Use Agreement
Willfully disclosing any information that could identify a person or establishment in any 
manner to a person or agency not entitled to receive it, shall be guilty of a class E felony 
and imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined not more than $250,000, or both.

INTRODUCTION
The Research and Development Survey (RANDS) is a series of cross-sectional 
surveys from probability-sampled commercial survey panels which began in 2015. 
RANDS 3 was administered by NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC) using the 
AmeriSpeak Panel in the spring of 2019 and contains existing questions from 
the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) as well as embedded probe questions 
and split-panel experiments for cognitive evaluations. 

RANDS 3 FILES AND DOCUMENTATION
The files listed below comprise the Research and Development Survey (RANDS) 
3 public use data release.
File Name				File Description		Format
RANDS3.csv				Data file 			CSV
RANDS3.txt				Data file 			TXT
RANDS3_codebook.pdf			Codebook			PDF
RANDS3_questionnaire.pdf		Questionnaire			PDF
RANDS3_technical_documentation.pdf	Survey documentation		PDF

SAS, R, STATA AND SPSS INPUT STATEMENTS
A sample SAS input statement program is provided for the data file. 
File Name				File Description		Format
RANDS3_read.sas				SAS program 			TXT
RANDS3_formats.sas			SAS program			TXT
Alternatively, the CSV data file can be loaded directly into different environments 
such as SAS, R, Stata, SPSS, etc. Steps on how to do this are shown below.
SAS:
SAS can read CSV files directly with the import procedure (PROC IMPORT) that is part 
of Base SAS. The command to read the CSV data file to a dataset called RANDS is:
	proc import datafile="C:\RANDS\RANDS3.csv" out= RANDS dbms=csv replace; 
	getnames=YES;
	run;
R: 
R can read data from CSV files using the user interface or by the read.csv() function. 
The command to read the CSV data file into a data frame called RANDS is:
	RANDS=read.csv("C:/RANDS/RANDS3.csv",header=TRUE) 
Stata:
Stata can import CSV data files using the Graphical User Interface (Select File->
Import->Text data created by a spreadsheet, type in the path to the file and choose 
comma-delimited as the delimiter). The corresponding command to read the CSV data 
file in Stata is:
	insheet using "C:\RANDS\RANDS3.csv", comma clear
SPSS:
SPSS can import CSV data using the text input wizard. In the text input wizard, indicate 
that the file is delimited and that variable names are included in the top of the file.

CAUTION
The RANDS data file contains some observations with extreme values that are likely 
implausible. These extreme values may represent errors in data entry. Researchers 
should determine how to handle these types of values when utilizing the RANDS data. 
RANDS 3 is a probability sampled web panel survey. The application of weights to the 
sample data is required to accurately assess the sampling error of statistics based 
on the survey data.  

STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICITY
This material has been cleared for public distribution by CDC/ATSDR and will be authentic 
if obtained directly from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). CDC/ATSDR 
makes all effort to assure the authenticity of electronically distributed documents. 
However, in all instances where the electronic and official agency record differ, the 
authenticity of the official agency record is controlling.