National Healthcare Agreement: P10-Breast cancer screening rates, 2010 QS
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 392609 |
Registration status: | Health, Superseded 08/06/2011 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: |
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Institutional environment: | The BreastScreen Australia Program (BSA) is a joint program of the Australian Government and state and territory governments. The target age group is women aged 50–69 years. The BSA is monitored annually. Results are compiled and reported at the national level by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in an annual BreastScreen Australia monitoring report. Numerator: BSA program registers in each state and territory are maintained by jurisdictional Program managers. Data from state and territory registers are provided to the AIHW annually as unit record data. For further information see the AIHW website. |
Timeliness: | Data available for the 2010 COAG Reform Council baseline report is based on the 2-year calendar period 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2008. Data are presented as a rate for the 2-year period to reflect the recommended screening interval. |
Accessibility: | The BSA annual reports are available via the AIHW website where they can be downloaded free of charge. |
Interpretability: | While numbers of women screened are easy to interpret, calculation of age-standardised rates is more complex and the concept may be confusing to some users. Information on how and why age-standardised rates have been calculated and how to interpret them is available in all AIHW BSA monitoring reports, for example, BreastScreen Australia monitoring report 2005–2006. Information on ABS data is available on the ABS website. Extensive information is also available on breast cancer screening and can be located both on the internet and in hard copy. |
Relevance: | The Program registers collect information on all breast cancer screening undertaken as part of the BSA Program. The use of Estimated Resident Populations (ERPs) based on Census data for denominators provide the most comprehensive data coverage possible. It is possible that some breast cancer screening is undertaken outside of the BSA Program. This additional screening means the data provided for this indicator is an underestimation of all women in the target age group who undergo breast cancer screening. It is not possible to estimate the extent of this underestimation. However, the data for the BSA Program are of high quality. |
Accuracy: | Remoteness and socioeconomic status are based on postcode of residential address at the time of screening. However, while the numerator is based on the postcode that a woman reports at the time of screen, the denominator is based on population by Statistical Local Area. This generally means that data can be acceptable at the national level, but produce spurious results at the jurisdictional level. Indigenous status disaggregated by jurisdiction leads to very small numbers leading to issues around confidentiality and comparability. This indicator is calculated on data that have been supplied to the AIHW by individual state and territory registers. Prior to publication, the results of analysis are referred back to jurisdictions for checking and clearance. Any errors found by jurisdictions are corrected once confirmed. Estimated Resident Populations and Indigenous Experimental Estimates and Projections are provided by the ABS. |
Coherence: | While this is the first year of reporting this indicator, these data are published annually in Program monitoring reports prepared by the AIHW. The most recent of these reports is BreastScreen Australia monitoring report 2005–2006. Information on ABS data is available on the ABS website. Extensive information is also available on breast cancer screening and can be located both on the internet and in hard copy. |
Source and reference attributes | |
Submitting organisation: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
Relational attributes | |
Related metadata references: | Has been superseded by National Healthcare Agreement: PI 10-Breast cancer screening rates, 2011 QS Health, Superseded 04/12/2012 |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: | National Healthcare Agreement: P10-Breast cancer screening rates, 2010 Health, Superseded 08/06/2011 |