The CPS is the Current Population Survey (CPS). This survey is administered by the Census and is one of the most widely used surveys in social science, particularly economics. A paper by Pascale et al. (2015) provides an overview of the survey and its quesitons related to health insurance:
The CPS is a monthly labor survey of the civilian noninstitutional population. Interviews are conducted in person or through telephone interviewing. The survey is based on a rotating panel design in which households are interviewed once a month for 4 consecutive months, are dormant for 8 months, and then in sample for another four consecutive months, for a total time span of 16 months in sample. In February through April of each year, the basic monthly questionnaire is supplemented with additional questions on income and health insurance (the ASEC).
In early spring of 2014, the CPS redesigned the health insurance questions on the ASEC. Some of the redesign was to facilitate more rapid interviewing in order to not require all members of a household to repeat coverage information for which they are a dependent. To examine how this change effects responses, the authors randomly assigned individuals to answer the old and new survey questions. They found:
Our results indicate that the odds of being insured at some point during the previous calendar year were higher in the new versus the old CPS, and the integrated calendar-year/point-in-time question series in the new CPS generated estimates of past calendar-year coverage that were higher than and distinct from estimates of coverage at a point-in-time….The test resulted in higher estimates of ESI [employer-sponsored insurance] than the control by 3.91 percentage points (p < .0021), and the control resulted in higher estimates of coverage from someone outside the household by almost a percentage point (p < .0060), and more military coverage by 1.82 percentage points (p = .0001). We found no significant differences in reporting of directly purchased coverage, or Medicaid or Medicare—as individual categories or combined with each other.
Source:
- Pascale, J., Boudreaux, M. and King, R. (2015), Understanding the New Current Population Survey Health Insurance Questions. Health Services Research. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.12312