The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is an ongoing annual survey, representative of the civilian, noninstitutionalized, household population of the United States (Minnesota Population Center and State Health Access Data Assistance Center 2016). Data from the 1997 to 2009 administrations of the NHIS were merged to examine the relationship of drinking pattern variables with mortality data (https://ihis.ipums.org/ihis/). NHIS data were collected via computer assisted personal interviews administered by interviewers employed and trained by the U.S. Census Bureau. Included in these analyses were N=340,668 individuals who were followed for at least two years (i.e. did not die in the first two years) and had mortality follow-up in the fourth quarter of 2011 based on linkage constructed by the National Center for Health Statistics between surveyed individuals and death certificate records from the National Death Index (National Center for Health Statistics. Office of Analysis and Epidemiology 2015). All individuals included were surveyed only once.
