Food Insecurity Supplement / Master and share files

Question

A while ago, it was posted that the Food Insecurity supplement is not available in PUMF format (master & share only). Could you tell me what (master & share only) means?

I have a student who would like the PUMF - can I assume that it will never be available as a PUMF? Do you know if there have been any reports, with aggregate stats, produced from this supplement?

Answer

I just ran across, in Canada food stats (it uses Food Insecurity supplement data) -
Food Insecurity (in: Health reports (82-003-XIE), vol 12(4), August 2001) linked from:
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/datalib/codebooks/dsp/23f0001/23f0001_04j.htm

As for the definitions related to master and share:

The master file is the final internal file containing all of the non-suppressed confidential data. It is from this file that the public use file is created. This is also the file used by divisions to do custom tabulations. It is the master file of some surveys that will go to the RDCs.

The share file is a subset of the master file. For some surveys we ask respondents if we can share their answers with other government departments - we have to name the other departments. Those that agree are kept on the share file and those that say no have there record removed. So the share file can contain the same level of detail as the file master file but less records. We do this whenever a government department that is sponsoring a survey has need of more detailed data than will be contained in the public use file. With the advent of RDCs and even a special RDC in Ottawa for federal departments the creation of a share file is becoming less frequent.