Key Concepts About Downloading Data Files, Documentation, and Laboratory Procedure Manuals

In addition to the data files needed to create your analytic dataset, it is advisable to download the Documentation specific to your laboratory analyte and the Laboratory Procedure Manual for each chemical group or analyte of interest. 

NHANES data are saved in SAS transport files (.XPT). The SAS transport format allows the data files to be extracted on Windows-, UNIX-, or Macintosh-based systems. However, this tutorial focuses on Windows-based systems.

The Documentation provides useful information such as sample eligibility, data processing and editing, and analytic notes. The Documentation, Codebook, and Frequencies are combined as a single Adobe Acrobat PDF file beginning with the 2003–2004 survey cycle.

The Laboratory Procedure Manual, available as an Acrobat PDF file, provides detailed information about specimen collection, storage, handling, sample preparation, measurement and reporting, and data quality assurance and control for each analyte.

 

The steps for downloading Data files, Documentation, and Laboratory Procedure Manual described in the “How To” section of this task. For the purposes of this tutorial, it is only necessary to download the Data files, Documentation, and Laboratory Procedure Manual if you plan to run the sample programs on your own computer.