Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance
National Statistics about the population of Scotland are based on data gathered from statistical censuses and surveys, vital events information registered with NRS and data extracted from other organisations’ administrative or management systems.
Under the Assured Quality Principle (Q3) of the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics, producers of Official Statistics are required to explain clearly how they assure themselves that statistics and data are accurate, reliable, coherent and timely. As part of this principle, they state that producers should be transparent about the quality assurance approach taken throughout the preparation of the statistics. You can find more information about how NRS do this in the Quality Assurance reports below.
Quality Assurance of Administrative Data Reports
In January 2015, the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) published the Administrative Data Quality Assurance Toolkit. NRS have used this toolkit to assess the quality and suitability of administrative data sources used to produce population statistics. Our introduction to quality assurance of administrative data (QAAD) provides an overview of how we have applied the toolkit in our QAAD reports.
QAAD reports for data sources used in the production of population statistics are available below:
We will publish reports for further data sources in due course. A summary of quality assurance arrangements as of June 2016 can be found in a paper published following the UKSA’s assessment of NRS population statistics. This paper and more information relating to the Code of Practice for Statistics is available from the National and Official Statistics section of this website.