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BACKGROUND: The BRFSS is an ongoing, population-based, random-digit-dialed telephone survey of non-institutionalized adults 18 years and older. BRFSS provides data on state-level prevalence of important health behavior risk factors and conditions. In 2011, a new weighting methodology called raking or iterative proportional fitting succeeded the post stratification weighting method that had been previously used with BRFSS data sets. Since 2009, Kansas provides local level data for most of its counties and public health preparedness regions in odd years. In 2011, Kansas BRFSS incorporated the new raking weighting methodology to produce county and regional level prevalence estimates for selected health risk behaviors and conditions. This presentation provides an overview of the new weighting, analysis and dissemination methods of local BRFSS data.
METHODS: In 2011, cell phone only respondents were interviewed in addition to respondents with landline telephones. For Kansas counties with more than 100 respondents, data were weighted on age, gender, race, education, marital status, home ownership, telephone source using state population distributions. Further, data were weighted for the individual county and public health preparedness (PHP) regions using population distribution in age, gender and race/ethnicity groups. Estimates were censored when the relative standard error was 30 percent or higher in addition to other rules. SAS 9.3 software was used for analysis. Results were disseminated using Instant Atlas software and individual county and region data reports.
RESULTS: Prevalence estimates for 43 indicators were obtained for 43 counties and 16 PHP regions. In addition, stratified analyses were conducted for all indicators using socio demographic, physical activity, smoking, insurance status and disability status groups. Reports for individual counties and regions were disseminated online.
CONCLUSIONS: Scientifically reliable BRFSS data for use in local public health efforts were obtained for counties and regions in Kansas using the new raking methodology.