[Health surveys in Catalonia, Spain: a literature review]

The aim of this study is to analyze biomedical publications on health surveys (HS) in the Catalan territory from documents published in various bibliographic databases to 2010. Analysis of 1,287 HS documents on 3 bibliographic sources of information relating to Catalonia, between 1991 and 2010. Scientific papers on HS in the Catalan territory have been 196. We studied the variables related to the topic of the article published, the magazine publication of the survey, the characteristics of sampling and the sample size, geographical area and timing of the survey. The articles reviewed represent 15.23% of all original documents. Half of them have been published in Spanish journals, stressing Gaceta Sanitaria and Medicina Clínica and the most studied issues are health and lifestyles. A 40.8% clearly explicit the characteristics of the sample, the size of them range between 49 and 23,126 individuals. It is suggested that HS in Catalonia are useful for generating knowledge about health, lifestyle and health resource utilization of the population, and its disclosure among health experts and the public.