The 2021 Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey (OMAS) is a critical resource for assessing health statuses, health care access and service utilization, and select behavioral risks for Ohioans, with an emphasis on current Medicaid members and adults who are potentially eligible to receive Medicaid insurance. The 2021 OMAS is the 9th iteration of the series which builds upon prior OMAS surveys to identify trend changes for Ohio's Medicaid, Medicaid-eligible, and non-Medicaid populations. It is a cross-sectional random probability survey of non-institutionalized Ohio adults ages 19 years and older and proxy interviews of children ages 18 years and younger. The 2021 survey had a \sample size of 34,534 adult interviews and 6,121 child interviews (via proxy adults).
The 2021 OMAS is an Ohio Medicaid Technical Assistance and Policy Program (MedTAPP) project funded by the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM), the Ohio Department of Health (ODH), the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OhioMHAS), and the Ohio State University (OSU). The OMAS survey vendor is RTI International, a non-profit organization that provides research and technical services.
Survey Data
The 2021 OMAS public use dataset and associated documentation are available for download below. This public use dataset contains data collected from the adult and child questionnaires, except for select variables relating to the administration of data collection.
2021 Public Use Datasets
2021 Analytical Codebook
2021 Questionnaire
2021 County-Level Small Area Estimation Maps & Tables
For select variables, to increase the precision of key outcomes from OMAS at the county level, a small area estimation (SAE) methodology was implemented – these variables were selected by the sponsoring agencies and the OMAS Executive Committee.
Design and Methods
The 2021 OMAS used a combination of a cell phone random-digit-dialing (RDD) sampling frame and an address-based sampling (ABS) frame. Sample members in the ABS and RDD frames were administered the same base questionnaire. Members of the ABS sample where invited to complete the survey by web or by paper – though only members who completed the survey by web were invited to complete the child section. Members of the RDD sample were invited to complete the survey through a combination of outbound calling using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and text messaging, inviting RDD sample members who had cellular phones to complete the survey by web. This 2021 iteration was the first OMAS iteration to occur during the COVID-19 pandemic and therefore the first iteration that needed to handle systematic changes in the way individuals communicate and their willingness to complete a survey. This new combination of modes was a direct response to these unique challenges.
The target population for the 2021 OMAS was all residents of Ohio. The OMAS sampling plan was a probability-based design with known probabilities of selection at each stage of selection. The general sample design was a stratified simple random sample of persons residing in Ohio. Final weights for the survey were constructed separately for the RDD and ABS portions and blended. To correct for any coverage deficiencies, poststratification adjustments were made to ensure that the final weights for the ABS sample align with population totals from the 2020 5-year American Communities Survey and that the final weights for the RDD sample align with known control totals. Finally, the ABS sample and RDD sample weights were blended to ensure that the combined sample did not overrepresent any population in the state and final poststratification adjustment were made to ensure that the blended estimates match population totals. See the 2021 methodology report for full details.
2021 Methodology Report
OMAS County Types
OMAS assigns counties to one of four mutually exclusive county types – rural Appalachian, rural non-Appalachian, metropolitan, and suburban. OMAS defines these county types in accordance with federal definitions, as follows: (1) Appalachia is defined using the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) standard; (2) Metropolitan is defined using US Census Bureau definitions incorporating urban areas and urban cluster parameters; (3) rural is defined by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), excluding Appalachian counties; (4) suburban is defined by the US Census Bureau and is characterized as a mixed-use or predominantly residential area within commuting distance of a city or metropolitan area.
These designations were originally set by the Ohio Department of Health in 1997 for the 1998 Ohio Family Health Survey (OFHS) and were slightly adjusted in 2004 and again adjusted in 2010 to include Ashtabula and Trumbull counties as Appalachian, in accordance with a federal re-designation. Guidance for these categories was provided by National Research Council’s Committee on Population and Demography staff – for original designations and revisions.
Research and Reports
Below is an overview and reports of key findings from the 2021 OMAS. The analyses completed s were exploratory and are meant to be descriptive in nature. Because they were not driven by specific research questions, no statistical testing was conducted and the precision of provided estimates is assessed using confidence intervals. The provided confidence intervals should not be used to conduct “ad-hoc” testing to compare differences between groups. For any research using data from the 2021 OMAS, a research plan should be specified that includes primary hypotheses and corresponding statistical analysis strategies.
Title and PI(s)
Download
OMAS 2021 Results Overview (Timothy Sahr)