Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 396272 |
Registration status: | Community Services (retired), Superseded 04/04/2011 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: | |
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has calculated this indicator. Data included in the National Perinatal Data Collection are collected as part of a National Minimum Data Set and were supplied by state and territory health authorities to the National Perinatal Statistics Unit (NPSU), a collaborating unit of the Institute. The state and territory health authorities receive these data from patient administrative and clinical records. This information is usually collected by midwives or other birth attendants. States and territories use these data for service planning, monitoring and internal and public reporting. For information on the institutional environment of the AIHW, please see the AIHW Institutional Environment. |
Timeliness: | The reference period for the data is 2007. Data are collected on an ongoing basis and are compiled by the AIHW annually. |
Accessibility: | The AIHW provides a variety of products that draw upon the National Perinatal Data Collection (NPDC). Published products available on the AIHW website are: Data for this indicator are published annually in Australia’s mothers and babies and biennially in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework report. |
Interpretability: | Supporting information on the use and quality of the NPDC are published annually in Australia’s mothers and babies (Chapter 1), available in hardcopy or on the AIHW website. Comprehensive information on the quality of Perinatal NMDS elements are published in Perinatal National Minimum Data Set compliance evaluation, 2001 to 2005. Readers are advised to read caveat information to ensure appropriate interpretation of the performance indicator. More detailed information on the quality of Indigenous data that might affect interpretation of the indicator was published in Indigenous mothers and their babies, Australia 2001-2004 (Chapter 1 & Chapter 5). Once nationally consistent data items on antenatal care are added to the Perinatal NMDS, metadata information for this indicator will be published in the AIHW’s online metadata repository — METeOR, and the National Health Data Dictionary. |
Relevance: | The NPDC comprises data items as specified in the Perinatal National Minimum Data Set plus additional items collected by the states and territories. The purpose of the Perinatal NMDS is to collect information at birth for monitoring pregnancy, childbirth and the neonatal period for both the mother and baby(s). The Perinatal NMDS is a specification for data collected on all births in Australia in hospitals, birth centres and the community. It includes information for all live births and stillbirths of at least 400 grams birthweight or at least 20 weeks gestation. It includes data items relating to the mother, including demographic characteristics and factors relating to the pregnancy, labour and birth; and data items relating to the baby, including birth status, sex, gestational age at birth, birthweight and neonatal morbidity and fetal deaths. Although the NPDC provides all relevant data elements of interest for this indicator, data are not available for all states and territories. Data reported for 2007 on number of women who gave birth who attended at least 1 antenatal visit in the first trimester are for New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory only. Although data on gestation at first antenatal visit are also collected in the Australian Capital Territory, they were not considered of sufficient quality to publish. Data reported for 2007 on number of antenatal visits are for Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory. Totals reported for this indicator are not generalisable to Australia. Information collected on antenatal care differ among the jurisdictions. Comparisons between states and territories should therefore be interpreted with caution. While each jurisdiction has a unique perinatal form for collecting data on which the format of the Indigenous status question and recording categories varies slightly, all systems include the NMDS item on Indigenous status of mother. No formal national assessment has been undertaken to determine completeness of the coverage of Indigenous mothers in the Perinatal NMDS or to determine variability between states and territories. However,the proportion of Indigenous mothers for the period 1997–2006 has been consistent, at 3.2–3.7 per cent of women who gave birth. Comparisons between states and territories should be interpreted with this caution. Mothers for whom Indigenous status was not stated (0.1 per cent missing) have been excluded from analyses for this indicator. All missing and null records (e.g. for antenatal visits) have been excluded from analyses for Part A. |
Accuracy: | Inaccurate responses may occur in all data provided to the Institute. The Institute does not have direct access to perinatal records to determine the accuracy of the data provided. However, the Institute undertakes validation on receipt of data. Data received from states and territories are checked for completeness, validity and logical errors. Potential errors are queried with jurisdictions, and corrections and resubmissions are made in response to these edit queries. The AIHW does not adjust data to account for possible data errors. Errors may occur during the processing of data by the states and territories or at the AIHW. Processing errors prior to data supply may be found through the validation checks applied by the Institute. This indicator is calculated on data that has been reported to the AIHW. Prior to publication, these data are referred back to jurisdictions for checking and review. The Institute does not adjust the data to correct for missing values. Note that because of data editing and subsequent updates of state/territory databases, and because data are being reported by place of residence rather than place of birth the numbers reported for this indicator differ from those in reports published by the states andterritories. The data are not rounded. Data presented by Indigenous status are influenced by the quality and completeness of Indigenous identification of mothers which is likely to differ among jurisdictions. Approximately 0.1 per cent of mothers who gave birth in the reference period had missing Indigenous status information. No adjustments have been made for under-identification or missing Indigenous status information. National data are not available for this indicator. Data reported for 2007 on number of women who gave birth who attended at least 1 antenatal visit in the first trimester are for New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory only. Data reported for 2007 on number of antenatal visits are for Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory only. Residents of these jurisdictions who give birth in a different jurisdiction will not have data on antenatal care. Proportions of records missing antenatal care information on whether the first visit was in the first trimester are very different for women who resided in New South Wales (2.3 per cent) and the Northern Territory (2.6 per cent) compared with South Australia (34.9 per cent). The timing of the first visits for women missing data may be distributed differently to those whose data have been reported. There are also differences in how the jurisdictions define antenatal visits. |
Coherence: | An interim measure is presented for this indicator, pending development and implementation of standard data definitions in the Perinatal NMDS. Data presented in future years may not be consistent or comparable with data presented here. Changing levels of Indigenous identification overtime and across jurisdictions may affect the accuracy of compiling a consistent time series in future years. |
Relational attributes | |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: | National Indigenous Reform Agreement: P14-Antenatal care, 2010 Community Services (retired), Superseded 04/04/2011 |