As part of a Federal consortium, the National Institute of Dental Research's (NIDR) Division of Epidemiology and Oral Disease Prevention (DEODP) staff and consultants collaborated with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to conduct a national oral health examination as a component of the 1988-94 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III). The NHANES III was designed to be fielded in two phases. Phase 1 took place between October 18, 1988, and October 24, 1991, at 44 survey locations; Phase 2, between September 20, 1991, and October 15, 1994, at 45 sites. This article provides general background information on the NHANES III and its oral health examination component which pertains to all six years of the full survey. It also focuses on particular aspects of the first three years of the survey (NHANES III-Phase 1)-the database for the articles in this peer-reviewed Special Issue--and provides the essential context for the substantively oriented analyses of the Phase 1 database which are presented in the articles which follow this overview.
