Quality Guidelines: Scope, Application, and Dissemination

Commitment to quality

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) will ensure that information we share (disseminate) meets the quality standards presented in our Quality Guidelines and guidelines from—

• Office of Management and Budget
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

NCHS ensures and maximizes the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information we share with the public. We strive to provide information that is accurate, reliable, clear, complete, unbiased, and useful. We are committed to integrating information quality into every phase of information development, including creation, collection, maintenance, and dissemination.

Application of standards

NCHS Quality Guidelines apply only to information disseminated on or after October 1, 2002. The administrative procedure for information correction applies to information disseminated by NCHS on or after October 1, 2002. It also applies to more recent resharing of information originally disseminated before that date.

The NCHS Quality Guidelines cover all statistical and analytic information products originated by NCHS with some limited exceptions.

These Quality Standards do not apply to—

• Documents not authored by NCHS staff or contractors that do not present official NCHS views
  • Research supported by NCHS funding falls under this exception
• Archival information shared by NCHS
• Information shared only with government employees or NCHS contractors or grantees
• Information intended solely for intra- or interagency use or sharing of government information
  • For example, evaluation of a specific methodological approach to assess its success
• Press releases that give public notice of information NCHS has shared elsewhere
• Information for public filings, subpoenas, or adjudicative processes
• Opinions that are clearly being offered as personal opinion rather than fact or NCHS views

Information products

Product types

NCHS shares a variety of statistical and analytic information products with the public.

• Statistical reports
• Statistical tables (tabulations)
• Publications in the "Healthy People" series
• The Secretary's annual report to Congress, "Health, United States"
• Public and restricted use data files

NCHS also shares the results of our epidemiologic, demographic, and methodological research.

Dissemination methods

NCHS shares statistical and analytic information products in a multiple ways.

• Print (publications, reports, books, brochures, pamphlets)
• Electronic (NCHS website, listservs, email, graphics, social media)
• Oral (speeches, presentations, commentaries)
• Audiovisual (videos, webinars)