DATA QUALITY (POST-STANDARDISATION)
Overall, the quality of both datasets was reasonably high, with most key variables containing less than 10% of values that were missing or invalid. There were some exceptions to this general finding, however, including the following (Note that the figures relate to post-standardised versions of the variables):
- 13% of all Death registrations (20,103 records) did not have a valid street number
- of Death registrations belonging to persons born overseas, 57% (27,036 records) did not have a valid Year of arrival.
In some cases, supplementary information was available to support the linkage, for example:
- of Death registrations that did not have a valid Street number, 71% (14,250 records) had stated a building name (such as a nursing home)
- of the 109 Death registrations without a valid street name, 85% (93 records) had stated a building name.
Table 2.2 displays the rate of missing values for standardised blocking and linking variables from Deaths and Census data. Note that the table does not account for other data quality issues such as unrepaired names and addresses.
Table 2.2 - MISSING DATA FOR KEY LINKING VARIABLES, Death registrations and Census
| | DEATHS
| | CENSUS
|
| | no. | % | | no. | % |
|
Geographic information | | | | | |
| Street number | 20 103 | 13.35 | | 496 937 | 2.37 |
| Street name | 109 | 0.07 | | 152 514 | 0.73 |
| Suburb | 115 | 0.07 | | 143 295 | 0.68 |
| Mesh Block | 3 | < 0.01 | | 189 145 | 0.90 |
| | | | | | |
Personal information | | | | | |
| First name | 5 | < 0.01 | | 85 032 | 0.41 |
| Surname | 2 | < 0.01 | | 125 868 | 0.60 |
| Initial 4 | 7 | < 0.01 | | 135 222 | 0.65 |
| | | | | | |
Personal characteristics | | | | | |
| Sex | 0 | 0.00 | | 200 148 | 0.96 |
| Age | 1 | < 0.01 | | 109 332 | 0.52 |
| Day of birth | 5 | < 0.01 | | 2 008 275 | 9.60 |
| Month of birth | 5 | < 0.01 | | 2 009 294 | 9.60 |
| Year of birth | 5 | < 0.01 | | 98 834 | 0.47 |
| Birthplace | 385 | 0.25 | | 626 072 | 2.99 |
| Year of arrival(a) | 133 199 | 86.80 | | 15 874 099 | 75.85 |
| Marital status(b) | 4 001 | 2.61 | | 4 179 771 | 6.85 |
|
(a) Includes persons born in Australia.
(b) Includes persons aged under 15.