Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Questionnaires

The Alaska Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is an annual telephone survey that asks Alaska adults about their health, as well as behaviors that could affect their health. It is coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and includes questions about health care access, chronic conditions, diabetes, nutrition, physical activity, tobacco and alcohol use, marijuana use, oral health, cancer screening, injury prevention, and more. Data are weighted to estimate the statewide population prevalence. 

The CDC core survey, which is required by all states, takes 17-18 minutes of time depending on the year. This leaves 5-6 minutes of time for Alaska chosen additions. The BRFSS program encourages additional questions that support local health efforts and priorities in Alaska, but there is a limited amount of space each year. The BRFSS program caps the survey at 23 minutes to ensure an adequate response rate and a more positive experience for randomly selected adults in Alaska. 

You will need to request a proposal from doh.brfss.info@alaska.gov. Submitted proposals are reviewed by an advisory team and questions are chosen based on several criteria including the amount of time questions take, how data will be used, if questions fill an existing data gap or a topic of public health importance, and if questions are appropriate for telephone data collection. Sometimes there is not enough room to include all the questions proposed, but the advisory team does their best to meet as many needs as possible. Being detailed on the proposal form is very important.

The CDC releases a draft survey by the end of the summer, but this varies a great deal from year to year. Sometimes a draft survey is not available by the time question proposals are due. This can be challenging for everyone. However, BRFSS staff know what is scheduled to be included at a high level. Please reach out to receive a draft survey (if available) or to ask about expected content at doh.brfss.info@alaska.gov.  

In addition to the required core survey, the CDC offers optional modules that are available for states to choose from each year. Optional modules are topic-specific and designed by the CDC (e.g., Marijuana Use, Pre-Diabetes, Adverse Childhood Experiences, etc.). They cannot be modified in any way. If states choose to add an optional module, the data are also included in the CDC public use datasets to allow researchers, policy makers, and public health professionals across the country to analyze data and conduct multi-state analyses. Core surveys and all available optional modules from prior years are posted to the CDC website.

Alaska-specific questions can also be added, but these are only included in the Alaska dataset. Open-ended questions are rarely accepted and are often not suitable for telephone-based surveys. Prior year questionnaires are included earlier on this page. 

Proposals are due on the Friday before Labor Day each year. Please mark your calendars! Proposals submitted in 2025 (for example) are for question inclusion on the 2026 survey.

Adding questions does cost money. BRFSS has limited funding and cannot support the cost of additional questions. Question costs are based on our contractor costs, the amount of time questions take, the shared cost of demographic questions, incorporating data in the Alaska BRFSS Data Center, and our estimated sample size. We aim for a minimum of 5,000 completed surveys each year. Questions that involve a subset of the sample (e.g., only females), are adjusted based on the proportion of the sample the subset comprises. We encourage you to work with other partners to share the cost of questions. Please contact doh.brfss.info@alaska.gov for a cost estimate.

BRFSS data collection runs on a calendar year. Funds will be required during the calendar year that the questions are included.  We recognize that many funding sources have different spend-by dates. However, we are charged monthly by our contractor and need to ensure we have enough money to pay our invoices throughout the year. Balancing these needs is usually not a problem. 

BRFSS data is collected for the entire calendar year. After that, data is processed by both the CDC and the Alaska BRFSS program. Raw data is typically available by the end of September the following year. Annual updates to the online Alaska BRFSS Data Center. are made after that, usually by mid-October.