The Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey
In 2003, Temple University joined the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation's (PHMC) Community Health Data Base (CHDB), giving faculty, students, and staff access to PHMC's biannual Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Survey and geographically-related vital statistics, home mortgage, property, and tax data. The survey includes information about the health status, personal health behaviors, access to and utilization of area health services, and other issues for some 13,000 residents in the five county Pennsylvania side of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area. Geographically-related data are available at the census tract, zip code, county, and regional level. SSDL has the data for 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. Special samples are available for children and the elderly.
Health Service Utilization Typology
Marketers use market segmentation as a way of characterizing different types of consumers. PHMC collaborated with Soluscient to add the Household View Variable (HHV) to the CHDB. The HHV categorizes CHDB survey respondents into 56 different market segments with respect to utilization of health care services. These consumer types are useful for predicting the way consumer households use health services and designing more effective ways to communicate with those consumers.
The HHV categorizes respondents based on marital status, age, gender, household income and presence or absence of children in the household. The variable is a single measure made from a number of demographic variables related to gender, class and socio-economic status. This measure can be seen as a proxy for specific types of health service utilization behaviors. The HHV may be of interest to academic researchers, as well as to marketing professionals.
View a Powerpoint presentation describing the market segmentation variables.
Instructions for accessing the Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey
SSDL provides access to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey to Temple University faculty, students, and staff. To use these data, Temple students must sign the Student Use Agreement (which requires faculty sponsorship) and other Temple Researchers (faculty and staff) must sign the Researcher Use Agreement . In addition, all users must fill out an Activity Reporting Form (which helps the University confirm the utility and benefit of the subscription for this data set). Student users also must have a faculty sponsor.
The data are in SPSS format, but SSDL can provide them in an alternative format (e.g., SAS, STATA) upon request. The codebook is available in PDF format to researchers in the Temple Community. If interested, please email SSDL to request that we email you a copy.
Information on the history and background of the CHDB is available here .
Information about the SEPAHHS is available here .
To download the use agreement for the SEPAHHS, click here.
Please download the use agreements, print them, fill them out, and call the SSDL at 215-204-5001 to make an appointment to pick up the CD.