You were invited to participate because your parent or guardian answered questions about your health as part of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The NHIS is the longest-running household health survey in the United States. It is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The goal of the NHIS is to better understand the health of people in the United States.
You do not have to do this if you do not want to. You can skip any questions you don’t want to answer. By taking part in NHIS-Teen you can make a difference by helping us learn about the health of teens in the United States.
Nobody knows more about your health than you! NHIS-Teen gives you a chance to tell us about your health care needs. Your answers will be combined with other teens to help us learn about the health and health issues facing teens in the United States.
NHIS-Teen covers a range of health topics including doctor visits, sleep, physical activity, injuries, mental health, social and emotional supports, and experiences with bullying and discrimination. You can skip any questions you don’t want to answer.
Yes! By law, your answers cannot and will NOT be shared with anyone, including your parents or guardians without your permission. Strict federal law protects your privacy and keeps your answers confidential under Section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 242m(d)), the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. § 552a) and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018 (Title III Public Law No: 115-435). In addition to the above cited laws, NCHS complies with the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancements Act of 2015 (6 U.S.C. §§ 151 and 151 note) which protects Federal information systems from cybersecurity risks by screening their networks. NCHS can only protect information once it is in the NCHS system and therefore cannot promise protection related to information shared when using a personal device.
The Census Bureau is conducting this survey on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the authority of Title 13, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 8(b) and Section 501(a)(2) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C §701). This survey has been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The eight-digit OMB approval number 0920-0214 appears at the bottom left corner of the survey web page. If this number were not displayed, we could not conduct this survey.
NCHS collects and uses information you provide in accordance with System of Records Notice 09-20-0164, Health and Demographic Surveys Conducted in Probability Samples of the United States (https://www.cdc.gov/SORNnotice/09-20-0164.htm).
Every year, the Ethics Review Board (ERB) of the National Center for Health Statistics reviews survey content and methods to protect study participants. You may call the Ethics Review Board to ask about your rights as a participant in this survey. The toll-free number is 1–800–223–8118. You will get an answering service. Please leave a brief message with your name and phone number. Say you are calling about Protocol #2019-09. Your call will be returned promptly.
Our secure servers use Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer (HTTPS) to ensure the encrypted transmission of data between your browser and the U.S. Census Bureau. This means that instead of sending readable text over the Internet, both your browser and our servers encode (scramble) all text using a security key. That way, personal data sent to your browser and data you send back are extremely difficult to decode in the unlikely event of interception by an unauthorized party. As a result of this, your browser must be capable of using the required encryption protocol and strength in order to connect to our servers. If you cannot connect to our secure servers, please upgrade to a newer browser.
Our secure servers use a digital certificate (digital ID) issued by a trusted, third party Certificate Authority (CA) as proof of identity. The only way to be sure of a website's authenticity is to view their digital ID. In this way, you can be assured that you are not being "spoofed" or tricked by an imposter. The digital ID will contain information such as the name of the organization that owns the website, the site's registered internet name/address, and the name of the Certification Authority under which the digital ID was issued. The method for viewing a website's Digital Certificate/ID varies depending on the web browser. Please see your browser's "Help" information for instructions on how to verify a web site's identity.
The Census Bureau is committed to making online forms and other public documents on its Internet server accessible to all. Currently, we are reviewing our websites and making modifications to those pages which are not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. We use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to create pages that are generally accessible to persons using screen-reading devices, and we are careful in our construction of HTML documents to ensure maximum accessibility. We include alternate text describing graphics.
Many Census Bureau Internet documents are in ASCII or HTML formats. These documents are accessible to persons using screen-reading software. We also have a large number of documents in Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Currently, many people using screen-reading devices cannot read documents in PDF format, specifically those that were created from a scanned hard copy.
Adobe Systems, Inc. is producing various products designed to make Adobe Acrobat documents accessible to persons using screen-reading software. Adobe's accessibility web pages describe their efforts.
To allow us to better serve those with visual disabilities who are having difficulty accessing PDF documents: you may contact us directly for further assistance at 301-763-INFO (4636), 800-923-8282, or by submitting a request at ask.census.gov.