From rhoskins@home.com Mon Apr 19 15:52:02 1999 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id PAA08542 for ; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:52:01 -0700 Received: from ha1.rdc1.wa.home.com (siteadm@ha1.rdc1.wa.home.com [24.0.2.66]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id PAA21364 for ; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:52:00 -0700 Received: from c501552a ([24.5.121.123]) by ha1.rdc1.wa.home.com (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with SMTP id AAA4327 for ; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:51:58 -0700 Message-ID: <00f401be8ab7$3422d9a0$7b790518@olmpi1.wa.home.com> From: "Richard E. Hoskins" To: References: Subject: Re: WAPHGIS: NZ hospital admin project Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:51:46 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 Sometimes in health departments people are collecting data and collecting data and collecting data and ... no one can use it. I have seen this (almost) happen in my agency. But with proper review board approval and if one presents a decent case for the need then hopefully people with legitimate uses can get it. So here you are with everything down to the street level, anyone who saw your map and GIS database could really compromise the privacy of anyone in the database. Of course you will not allow unauthorized persons access to you data. Then the challenge becomes how to do the analysis and present the data in some reasonably public way that it will be useful for raising public awareness and for policy makers. It does seem curious that they collect street level data but get the Census Area Unit wrong 40% of the time. However if you had good Census Area Unit data, you might still be able to do your study anyway by using the aerial interpolation/ spatial SQL functions in your GIS. I think sometimes people put too much value on street level. Dick H ----- Original Message ----- From: Greg Lauer To: Sent: Monday, April 19, 1999 6:04 AM Subject: Re: WAPHGIS: NZ hospital admin project > Thanks for your comments > > For the project I am undertaking I need to have the data at meshblock level > (~50 housholds). The agency that collects the data does not supply the data > to this level. They do at higher level (CensusArea Unit). Problem is the > that the accuracy rate is unknown, and could be less than 60%. This is > mainly due to the lack of a geocoding standards in NZ. Thus I need > individual address data. Once aggragated to meshblock level the addresses > will be stripped. Then the data will be further utilised. > > I totaly understand the need to preserve confidentiality/privacy. Wouldnt > want someone getting hold of my health data. Sort of between a rock and a > hard place though:-) > > I am awaiting a reply from the regional ethics committee. Fingers crossed...... > > Cheers > > Greg > > >Greg: In my state if we are doing a research project it is pretty routine > >to get an IRB (institutional review board) approval for using address data. > >If you have boundaries for the census unit and you can geocode down to the > >census unit then there is no reason to go down to street level. If you can't > >figure out what census unit they are in but you can get to the street level > >then you will need to do a point/polygon query in your GIS to get that info. > >I assume you have population numbers for the census units and you want to > >calculate rates? or what? Our IRB requires that we do not share the data or > >identifiers, or remove names. As you know calculating rates with small units > >like this can be a problem, so we adjust rates using empirical Bayesian > >smoothing methods or Tukey headbanging, the method used in the NCHS National > >Mortality Atlas. > Greg Lauer > Department of Geography > University of Canterbury > PO Box 36348 > Merivale > Christchurch, New Zealand > .