Sub-series details: CRDA/24/DS/1990

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 holds public health data for 1989. Further information about the Public Health Common Datasets (PHCDS) is provided in theSeries Catalogue and Dataset Documentation Catalogues. The sub-series consists of 3 datasets comprising a total of 33 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 datasets provide data on population and demography, fertility, births, stillbirths and abortions, deaths and standardised mortality ratios.

The 3 datasets which comprise CRDA/24/DS/1990 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.

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 conditions apply.

The language of the materials is .

The data is available for Health Authorities (HAs), NHS Regions and nationally for England, and England and 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 validated are given in the Series Catalogue.

No discrepancies were noted in the original spreadsheet files as compared to the expected contents as described in the User Guide for the 1990 PHCDS, See the Dataset Documentation Catalogue

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):