Overview and Quality Assurance for the Oral Health Component of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2003-04

The 2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was a collaborative effort involving 28 federal funding partners with the National Center for Health Statistics. The collaborators for the 2003-04 NHANES oral health component included the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Oral Health. Oral health data are available on 8,272 persons aged 2 years or older. This report provides an overview of the 2003-04 oral health component including content descriptions and procedures for oral health assessments conducted for the first time in a national survey in the United States. These assessments include posterior functional contacts, tooth wear, and oral health-related quality of life. This report also provides evaluations of data quality in terms of examiner reliability statistics (percent agreements, kappas, and correlation coefficients) for various NHANES 2003-04 oral health examination components and analytical recommendations for producing 6-year estimates using the previous two NHANES data collection components (1999-2000 and 2001-02).