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. 2004 Jun 19;328(7454):1478. doi: 10.1136/bmj.328.7454.1478

Table 6.

Association between eight organisational characteristics of 105 clinical databases with full entry in DoCDat, August 2003, and five quality criteria. (Values are relative risk of characteristic being associated with good quality*)

Quality criteria
Organisational characteristics Recruitment Completeness of data Explicit definitions Independent outcomes Validation
National coverage (v regional) 0.98 0.77 1.15 0.80 1.88
Continuous or periodic data collection (v one off) 1.16 1.72 0.91 1.25 1.47
Patients informed of data collection (v not informed) 1.30 1.79 0.83 1.09 1.24
Approval by professional body (v none) 0.82 1.08 1.04 1.03 1.64
Linkage to other databases (v none) 1.30 0.80 1.24 1.16 1.75
Membership of management team (v none):
Epidemiologist or statistician 1.58 0.85 1.13 0.86 1.87
General manager 1.31 0.93 1.04 1.08 0.96
Layperson 0.97 0.74 1.02 0.79 0.53
*

Definitions of good quality. Recruitment: ≥90% of eligible population recruited to database. Completeness of data: 80% of variables 95% complete. Explicit definitions: 50% of variables have explicit written definition. Independent outcomes: independent observer blinded to intervention or objective outcome. Validation: range and consistency checks.

P=0.016.