Specialist Homelessness Services Collection Data Quality Statement 2013-14
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
---|---|
METEOR identifier: | 593778 |
Registration status: | AIHW Data Quality Statements, Superseded 14/12/2016 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: |
DescriptionThe Specialist Homelessness Services Collection (SHSC) collects information on people seeking services from agencies that receive funding under the NAHA or the NPAH to provide specialist homelessness services. |
---|---|
Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia's health and welfare. It is an independent corporate Commonwealth entity established in 1987, governed by a management Board, and accountable to the Australian Parliament through the Health and Ageing portfolio. The AIHW aims to provide authoritative information and statistics to promote better health and wellbeing. The Institute collects and reports information on a wide range of topics and issues, ranging from health and welfare expenditure, hospitals, disease and injury, and mental health, to ageing, homelessness, disability and child protection. The Institute also plays a role in developing and maintaining national metadata standards. This work contributes to improving the quality and consistency of national health and welfare statistics. The Institute works closely with governments and non-government organisations to achieve greater adherence to these standards in administrative data collections to promote national consistency and comparability of data and reporting. One of the main functions of the AIHW is to work with the states and territories to improve the quality of administrative data and, where possible, to compile national datasets based on data from each jurisdiction, to analyse these datasets and disseminate information and statistics. For further information see the AIHW website www.aihw.gov.au. The SHSC was developed by AIHW in conjunction with the states and territories and is being administered by the AIHW.All agencies that receive funding under the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) or the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness (NPAH) to provide specialist homelessness services are in scope for the SHSC, but only those expected to provide data are covered. Data is collected monthly from agencies participating in the collection. |
Timeliness: | The SHSC began collecting data from 1 July 2011. The SHSC collects information from all participating agencies every month. Data collected is regularly loaded to a Master Database. Once sufficient data is received, validated ‘snapshots’ are created at particular points in time from this Master Database for reporting purposes. |
Accessibility: | Results are published on the AIHW website. Data not available online or in reports can be requested via the online customised data request system https://datarequest.aihw.gov.au; or obtained from the Communications, Media and Marketing Unit on (02) 6244 1032 or via email to [email protected] . Data requests are charged on a cost-recovery basis. |
Interpretability: | Information on the development of the SHSC, definitions and concepts, and collection materials and processes can be found on the AIHW website, www.aihw.gov.au. Information on definitions, concepts and classifications can also be found in the SHSC’s collection manual (AIHW 2011). |
Relevance: | Scope and coverage―clients
|
Accuracy: | Potential sources of error As with all data collections, the SHSC estimates are subject to errors. These can arise from data coding and processing errors, inaccurate data, or missing data. Reported findings are based on data reported by agency workers. Data validation The AIHW receives data from specialist homelessness agencies every month. These data go through two processes of data validation (error checking). Firstly, data validation is incorporated into the client management systems (CMSs) most agencies use to record their data. Secondly, data are submitted through the AIHW online reporting web-portal, Specialist Homelessness Online Reporting (SHOR). SHOR completes a more thorough data validation and reports (to staff of the homelessness agency) any errors that need correcting before data can be accepted. Agency participation Of all the agencies expected to participate for at least one month in the collection (1542), 96.2% submitted information for each collection month where they were expected to participate, 2% provided data for some but not all months where data was expected, and 1.75% failed to provide data for any month. Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) validity An individual client may seek or receive support on more than one occasion—either from the same agency or from a different agency. Data from individual clients who presented at different agencies and/or at different times is matched based on a statistical linkage key (SLK) which allows client level data to be created. The SLK is constructed from information about the client’s date of birth, sex and an alphacode based on selected letters of their name. Incomplete responses In many support periods, in 2013–14, valid responses were not recorded for all questions—invalid responses were recorded, ‘don’t know’ was selected, or no response was recorded. Support periods with invalid/’don’t know’/missing responses were retained in the collection and, no attempt was made to deduce or impute the true value of invalid/’don’t know’/missing responses. Non-response bias Imputation An imputation strategy is used to correct for two types of non-sampling error: agency non-response and data error in the statistical linkage key data item, which is used to link information about individual clients together to provide a complete picture for that client. |
Coherence: | The SHSC replaces the SAAP NDC, which began in 1996. The SHSC differs from the SAAP NDC in many respects. The major definitional differences between SAAP and SHSC relate to the capture of information about children and support. In the SAAP NDC, children who accompanied a parent or guardian were counted as accompanying children (with only limited information collected); in the SHSC, children are included as clients (in their own right) if they directly receive a service. In SAAP, support was considered to entail generally 1 hour or more of a worker’s time; in SHSC no time-related condition exists. The SHSC employs an imputation strategy to correct for two types of sampling error; agency non-response and data error in the SLK key data item on a consistent basis for each year of the collection. In addition a ramp up imputation was also utilised in the first year of the collection to account for the month on month increase in the number of agencies that submitted data, and in order to report the full years activities in the first year and ensure that data was comparable acorss years of the collection. |
Source and reference attributes | |
Submitting organisation: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
Steward: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
Reference documents: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2014). Specialist Homelessness Services 2013-14. Cat. no. HOU XXX. Canberra: AIHW. |
Relational attributes | |
Related metadata references: | Supersedes Data quality statement (Specialist Homelessness Services Collection—December quarter 2011) AIHW Data Quality Statements, Superseded 15/12/2014 Has been superseded by Specialist Homelessness Services Collection Data Quality Statement 2014-15 AIHW Data Quality Statements, Superseded 14/12/2016 |