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REVIEW

Information Paper: External Causes of Death, Data Quality, 2005 (cat. no. 3317.0.55.001)

Deaths due to external causes are an important part of cause of death data produced by the ABS.(define external causes of death). The coding of the data supports the development of policy for injury prevention, particularly from an ageing perspective. The Information Paper: External Causes of Death, Data Quality, 2005 (cat. no. 3317.0.55.001), released on 11 April 2007 provides information to users of ABS Causes of Death data about data quality issues concerning external causes of death and to assist them in interpreting the existing collection. Nationally, the number of deaths of older people (those aged 65 years and over) due to external causes for the 2005 registration year was 2,832. The leading external causes of death for older people were falls (31%), transport accidents (10%) and suicides (10%) (Causes of Death, Australia, 2005 (cat. no. 3303.0), unpublished data available on request).

The process of producing causes of death data is described in the Information Paper: External Causes of Death, Data Quality, 2005 (cat. no. 3317.0.55.001). Data quality issues relating to particular parts of the process and the current impact of these data quality issues on the data for external causes of death data are described. Cautions are given regarding interpretation of the data, and recent initiatives to address these data quality issues are discussed.