The importance of good data: how The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses has been used to improve knowledge and policy.

In 1977, the federal government launched the nation's largest and most significant program to collect data on the registered nurse (RN) workforce of the United States-the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN). This survey is conducted by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, first in 1977 and then every 4 years since 1980. This article offers the history of the NSSRN and a review of the ways in which the NSSRN data have been used to examine education, demographics, employment, shortages, and other aspects of the RN workforce. The influence this body of research has had on policymaking is explored. Recommendations for future research are offered, in the hope that future waves of the NSSRN will continue to be used to their fullest potential.

National health surveys and the behavioral model of health services use.

National health surveys have played an important role in the development of health services research. They have contributed to the advancement of concepts, methods, and the policy relevance of the field. One product of these surveys was the Behavioral Model of Health Services Use. This article documents a 75-year legacy by reviewing the series of national studies that have given to the form and function of health services research. It further examines the Behavioral Model through 40 years of considerable application and alteration.

Race, class, and health: school medical inspection and "healthy" children in British Columbia, 1890-1930.

School medical inspection provides a window on the construction of "healthy" children in British Columbia over the turn of the 20th century. Public health reformers, doctors, teachers, and school nurses encouraged children and their parents to conform to a particular model of healthy living. This paper argues that this model, reflecting Anglo-Celtic, middle-class, and urban sensibilities, pathologized children and families unable or unwilling to conform to this powerful social ideal. Far form simply signaling the triumph of sanitary science, school medical inspection was a powerful means of legitimizing existing relations of power and confirming social boundaries.

Canadian health surveys, 1950 1997.

This paper provides a brief history of Canadian health surveys and a review of health or health-related surveys from the first national household survey in 1950/51 to the present time. Surveys have evolved from collecting information on health care utilization, health status and some risk behaviours to a wider range of health determinants following the 1974 Lalonde report. In addition to the occasional cross-sectional surveys, there are periodic surveys, longitudinal surveys, school-based surveys and surveys based on subgroups in the population or specific topic areas. The survey review is presented in the following four tables: Table 1 summarizes national surveys including such information as the date(s) and frequency of data collection, topic areas, target population, sample size and response rate for each survey; Table 2 provides the same information for provincial surveys; both tables point to Table 3, which supplements the previous information with survey sponsors and contacts; Table 4 provides similar information for commercial surveys. This reference, which will be updated periodically, is intended to act as a source of information and support in the development of new surveys.