The 1988 National Health Interview Survey on Child Health (NHIS-CH) was conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and cosponsored by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and the Health Resources and Services Administration. The U. S. Census Bureau directed field work for the survey. The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is a continuous, cross-sectional survey representing the household population of the United States. Each year the NHIS collects basic health and demographic information by face-to-face interview with a sample of about 122,000 family members in about 47,000 families. Typically, different households are sampled each year. For the 1988 NHIS-CH, additional information was collected for one randomly selected child 0-17 years of age in each NHIS sample household.

Topics covered in the 1988 NHIS-CH interview included child care, marital history of the child's parents, geographic mobility, circumstances of the pregnancy and birth, injuries, impairments, acute conditions, chronic conditions, passive smoking, sleep habits, school problems, developmental problems, and use of health care services. Some of the same topics were included in the 1981 NHIS on child health, permitting trend analyses. Other special health topic questionnaires administered in 1988 resulted in public use data files that can be linked to the NHIS-CH. Those topics included alcohol use and occupational health, both asked of a sample adult in the family. Those data sets are available from NCHS.

It should be noted that the health characteristics described by NHIS estimates pertain only to the resident, civilian non-institutionalized population of the United States living at the time of the interview. The sample does not include persons residing in nursing homes, members of the armed forces, institutionalized persons, or U.S. nationals living abroad