Driver's license and voter registration lists as population-based sampling frames for rural African Americans

To compare coverage of a state driver's license list and county voter registration lists as frames for sampling rural African Americans.

Name, birth date, sex, and county were extracted from records for all 18--59 year-old African Americans residing in eight rural North Carolina counties and listed in the North Carolina Driver license file [obtained as a SAS dataset from the University of North Carolina (UNC) Highway Safety Research Center] and in machine-readable text files of registered voters (obtained from county boards of elections). Files were edited, merged, and matched by last name and date of birth to produce three files for each five-year age group, sex, and county: 1) persons listed only in the driver's file; 2) persons listed only in the voter's file; and 3) persons listed in both.

The median percentages of unique persons found only on the driver's list, only on the voter's list, and on both lists were 54%, 17%, and 30% men, and 35%, 25%, and 41% women, respectively.

The driver's list provided better coverage than did voter registration lists. Federal legislation that prohibits states from releasing driver's license lists for use in surveys removes a valuable resource for population-based research.