DATA ELEMENTS AND DATA ELEMENT CONCEPTS
DATE OF BIRTH
IDENTIFYING AND DEFINITIONAL ATTRIBUTES
Metadata type:
DATA ELEMENT Version: 1
Definition:
Date of birth of a person.
Context:
Date of Birth is required to enable data providers to determine the data element 'Age'.
RELATIONAL AND REPRESENTATIONAL ATTRIBUTES
Datatype:
Alphanumeric
Field size:
Min: 10 Max: 10
Representational form:
Date
Representational layout:
DD/MM/YYYY
Data domain:
Valid date
Guide for use:
The data element Date of Birth applies to all persons.
The Year component of the date must be 4 digits long.
For the purposes of the ABS criminal courts collection only, if the actual date of birth is not known or cannot be obtained, provision should be made to collect or estimate age (in years).
Some suggested standard questions to use to collect age in this instance are:
Age last birthday?
What was [your] [the person's] [(name)'s] age last birthday?
What is [your] [the person's] [(name)'s] age in complete years?
A Date of Birth can then be derived from this age using 0101 as DDMM if only the year is known. The actual or estimated year of birth should then be converted to an estimated Date of Birth according to the following convection: 0101YYYY, where YYYY is the estimated year of birth.
It is recommended that estimated Dates of Birth be identified by an appropriate date flag to prevent inappropriate use of Date of Birth data for record identification and/or the derivation of other data elements (such as age) that require Date of Birth information.
Verification rules:
Date of Birth needs to be such that the defendant is at or above the age of criminal liability (which is 10 years of age).
Collection methods:
The ideal question for most collections is:
What is [your] [the person's] [(name)'s] date of birth?
The recommended format for the collection of age data using a self-enumerated questionnaire is:
Date of Birth: _ _ / _ _ / _ _ _ _
This provides the greatest amount of detail and flexibility as it can easily be converted to completed days, weeks, months and years as required. It also improves data quality and should be used wherever possible.
Related metadata:
Is used to derive the data element:
Is a characteristic of the data element concept:
ADMINISTRATIVE ATTRIBUTES
Source document:
1. National Health Data Dictionary V12
2. Juvenile Justice National Minimum Dataset Data Dictionary
Source organisation:
1. National Health Data Committee
2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
History:
Commenced 2005
Comments:
None
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