Sub-series details: CRDA/24/DS/1988

The datasets in this sub-series were transferred from the Department of Health on a CD-ROM which was received by NDAD on 1 October 1999.

This sub-series includes public health data for 1988. Further information about the Public Health Common Datasets (PHCDS) is provided in the Series Catalogue and Dataset Documentation Catalogues. The sub-series consists of 43 tables which contain various indicators for health regions in England. Data is arranged by administrative areas, namely Health Authorities and National Health Service (NHS) regions. The dataset provides data on population and demography, fertility, births, stillbirths and abortions, deaths and standardised mortality ratios.

The 3 datasets which comprise CRDA/24/DS/1988 were transferred to NDAD in the form of Symphony (WR1) spreadsheet files. Copies of the Symphony files were processed using Microsoft Excel 97 and Microsoft Visual Basic (under Windows 95 / 98) and converted to comma-separated (CSV) format. All headings and metadata present in the original spreadsheets were removed before converting the files to CSV, along with blank rows and columns which had been included in the spreadsheets for layout purposes.

CRDA/24/DS/1988/3 contains a number of tables (CRDA/24/DS/1988/3/14-CRDA/24/DS/1988/3/25) which contain standardised mortality ratios for avoidable causes of death. The format of these files is somewhat different from the standard format in that they cover 2 or more avoidable causes and the data on the second cause is held below the first (with an additional column identifying the cause), rather than to the right as is the case in the 'standard' format. In addition, the name of the area is held followed by the code for the area, whereas all other tables have code followed by name. To facilitate comparison with other tables, when the data in these spreadsheets was exported the area code and area names fields were swapped and the additional column was named 'Cause'. CRDA/24/DS/1988/3/26 (allcau88) is similar to the above-mentioned files in that the multiple batches of records are held 'vertically' but in this case there is no identifying column (ie equivalent to CAUSE); a new field AGE, which equates to the cell which identifies the age group covered by each batch of data in that file, was introduced to cover this. Note that the code used for RHAs in CRDA/24/DS/1988/3/14-CRDA/24/DS/1988/3/26 differs in that in these files the codes are space,A,B,...,W; in the 'standard' files, the codes are O00, A00, B00 ...

Some original spreadsheets contain formatting of numeric fields, for example fields are set to display as integers when they actually hold real numbers. Fields with many figures after the decimal point are displayed with just 2 figures after the decimal point. In order to preserve the more detailed figures, the formatting of numeric fields was set to Microsoft Excel General format before converting the files to CSV. However, it must be assumed that original users of the spreadsheets would have seen the data as it had been originally formatted. Although some files contain fields that have many decimal places, users are advised that NDAD recommends that all data in the PHCDS is not quoted at more than two decimal places. This is because fields are not formatted with more than two decimal places in the original spreadsheet files. NDAD assumes that this is because the data creators considered the data to be accurate to, at most, two decimal places.

The PHCDS in its original format does not use specific field names as such: generally, spreadsheet packages do not require data to be held within named fields. The indicators within PHCDS do have original names which have been preserved but these equate to the table name within NDAD. In other words the heading of each spreadsheet equates to the title of the indicator and forms the title of the table in NDAD. To identify fields within a table, NDAD has allocated names sequentially: the first field is named F1, second F2 etc. The column headings in the spreadsheet, supplemented at times by information from the 'Data definition and user guide', form the basis of the field descriptions.

No access restrictions apply.

The language of the materials is .

Definitions for the 1988 PHCDS are only available from the metadata contained within the original spreadsheet files. However, data for subsequent years was issued with user guides for the computer files and these contain further metadata. These User Guides have been transferred to NDAD and can be consulted via the Dataset Documentation Catalogue. The data for the 1990 PHCDS (CRDA/24/DS/1990) is similar in structure to the 1988 data. Where appropriate, descriptions of indicators in the User Guide to the 1990 data, reference CRDA/24/DD/1/1, have been used to describe the 1988 data. See the Dataset Documentation Catalogue. Information from the metadata contained in the original spreadsheet files and the 1990 User Guide has been used in compiling the Table catalogues in the individual datasets.

The data is available for Health Authorities (HAs) and NHS Regions and England. Some data is available for Wales. The data has been organised into three datasets by topic. For access to these datasets, see Links to dataset catalogues.

Details of the sources which were used to produce the Public Health Common Data Set and how the data was checked are given in the Series Catalogue.

One original spreadsheet, c5 has poor data quality and appears to be a version of c5p. Both of these spreadsheets, in the first 2 columns containing figures for Expected deaths and SMR for persons, contain underlying formulae which calculate the persons figures from the equivalent figures for males and females; in subsequent columns of c5p relating to persons Exp and SMR, some of these cells contain '#VALUE' suggesting that the formulae to calculate the figures ceased to work correctly at some stage prior to transfer of the data to NDAD. '#VALUE' has been defined as a missing value for the table c5p.

Spot checks were carried out to compare the transformed data against the data in the original Symphony files. These included comparing the values of specific fields and checking that the totals of numeric fields were the same. In addition, each table was checked to ensure that the overall number of records and fields remained the same. No discrepancies were detected between the original and transformed data. The only differences found resulted from rounding and/or floating point representation, particularly for example where the original numbers had 12 figures after the decimal point. The transformed data is restricted to the level of accuracy provided by the general format in Excel (generally 8 figures after the decimal point).

Dataset catalogues provide more detailed information about individual datasets, and are currently available for the following dataset(s):