IDENTIFYING & EVALUATING DATA SOURCES

Further Information

Identifying data sources and making a decision regarding their suitability for asthma monitoring are the main tasks for this phase of the work program. Initially, once a data source is identified, it is then aligned with the indicator(s) that it may be able to monitor.

There are two stages to this process - Data Description (Table 1), and Data Source Assessment (Table 2).

Table 1: Preliminary Criteria for Data Description

Criteria	Description
Asthma definition	Factors used to determine an asthma case
Coverage	Is data available for Local Area, State, Nationally
Sampling method	Method for selecting population
Population	Target population for the study
Sample Size	Size of the sample in the study
Frequency/year of study/survey /Time Series available	When the study was conducted and how often, to give an indication of availability of time series data
Completeness of data	Response rate
Disaggregation	Age, Sex, ATSI, Ethnicity, SES, Geographic Area

Based on criteria developed by PHIDU for the Nationwide Chronic Disease and Associated Risk Factor Information and Monitoring System

Table 2: Preliminary Criteria for Data Source Assessment

Criteria	Description
Acceptability	Willingness of data source custodians to participate in a monitoring system for asthma.
Completeness of data	Proportion of all people with asthma who are identified by the data source
Sensitivity to changes over time	Ability of the data source to pick up changes over time
Predictive value positive	Proportion of persons identified as cases who actually have asthma
Representativeness	Whether the person with asthma in the data source are representative of people with asthma in the population
Timeliness	Time taken from data collection to data availability and the availability of time series data for trends

Based on monitoring criteria developed by Klaucke, DN., for evaluating public health surveillance