hesscl/quackrfss

🦆 BRFSS 1990–2024

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey microdata for all 35 years of publicly available data (1990–2024), converted from CDC SAS Transport (XPT) format to Parquet. ~10.1 million respondents.

Source pipeline: hesscl/quackrfss

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🚀 Quick start

No account, no download, no build. Just DuckDB:

import duckdb
con = duckdb.connect()

# Single year
con.sql("""
    SELECT GENHLTH_lbl, COUNT(*) AS n
    FROM read_parquet('hf://datasets/hesscl/quackrfss/data/BRFSS_2024.parquet')
    GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC
""").show()

# Trend across all years
con.sql("""
    SELECT
        YEAR,
        ROUND(100.0 * COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE GENHLTH_lbl IN ('Fair', 'Poor'))
              / COUNT(*), 1) AS pct_fair_poor
    FROM read_parquet('hf://datasets/hesscl/quackrfss/data/BRFSS_*.parquet')
    WHERE GENHLTH_lbl IS NOT NULL
    GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1
""").show()

# Load a year into pandas
df = con.sql("""
    SELECT * FROM read_parquet('hf://datasets/hesscl/quackrfss/data/BRFSS_2024.parquet')
""").df()

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📦 Dataset structure

Files

One Parquet file per year: data/BRFSS_{year}.parquet (1990–2024).

Years	Files	Approx. rows	Weight variable
2011–2024	BRFSS_2011.parquet … BRFSS_2024.parquet	400k–510k/year	_LLCPWT
1990–2010	BRFSS_1990.parquet … BRFSS_2010.parquet	80k–450k/year	_FINALWT

Columns

Every file includes:

• YEAR (int16) — survey year
• Raw numeric variables (float32) — original CDC-coded values (e.g. GENHLTH = 3)
• *_lbl companion columns (dict<int8, string>) — human-readable label for each categorical variable (e.g. GENHLTH_lbl = 'Good'). Dictionary-encoded for compact storage.

Variable sets differ across years (BRFSS adds and drops questions). Columns absent in a given year simply aren't present in that year's file.

Key variables

Variable	Description
GENHLTH / GENHLTH_lbl	General health (Excellent → Poor)
_STATE / _STATE_lbl	State FIPS code
_LLCPWT	Final survey weight (2011–2024)
_FINALWT	Final survey weight (1990–2010)
SEX / SEX_lbl	Sex of respondent
AGE / _AGEG5YR_lbl	Age / age group
SMOKE100	Ever smoked 100+ cigarettes
DIABETE3 / DIABETE4	Ever told have diabetes
BPHIGH4	Ever told blood pressure high

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⚠️ Comparability notes

• 2011 methodology change: BRFSS introduced combined landline + cellphone sampling in 2011 and a new weighting methodology (_LLCPWT). Pre- and post-2011 data are not directly comparable without adjustment.
• 2020: COVID-19 forced telephone-only collection and reduced response rates.
• 1999: No value-label columns (*_lbl) — the source SAS file for this year contains no parseable value mappings.
• Variable drift: Questions are added and dropped year to year. Always check which years a variable appears in before running cross-year analyses.

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🔬 Source data

BRFSS data is collected annually by state health departments in collaboration with CDC. Raw XPT files are published at: https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm

This dataset was built using quackrfss, which downloads the XPT files, parses value labels from SAS format and sasout files, and converts to Parquet with *_lbl companion columns.

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📄 License

BRFSS data is produced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is in the public domain as a work of the US federal government. Pipeline code is MIT licensed.

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📝 Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite the CDC BRFSS program:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey Data. Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1990–2024.