Potentials of local health surveys: a state-of-the-art summary

This paper provides a state-of-the-art summary of the potentials and limitations of local surveys for assessing health problems in local areas. The information they provide may be helpful for a variety of purposes such as measuring the need for services, planning programs to address these needs, and evaluating their impact. Particular advantages of surveys are that they: provide information on the needs of people who have not sought care; permit special studies of particular target groups; provide data on variables which are only available from "asking" people; enable information to be collected on a range of correlates and indicators of health care behavior; provide an opportunity for examining relationships among variables; and permit well-timed community estimates of the impact of experimental programs. Limitations include the validity and reliability of survey data, and the costs and other problems of survey implementation.