Bryan Glastonbury is a Research Professor at the Centre for Human Service Technology.

Contact him at: CHST, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton. SO17 1BJ

Author - Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Published by UK Government Statistical Service

Available from:

ONS Sales Desk,
Zone B1/06,
Office for National Statistics,
1 Drummond Gate,
London, SW1V 2QQ
UK

Tel: enquiries +44 (0) 171 533 6262
Credit cards only +44 (0) 171 533 5678
Fax: +44 (0) 171 533 5689
CD with manual, 1997

Price £50 plus VAT.

 
new technology in the human services

Twentieth Century Mortality

reviewed by Bryan Glastonbury

Description

This is not a stand-alone package: rather it is a data set offered in four different formats for analysis within a database program. The formats are for two versions of Microsoft’s Access, V2 and 95, for dBase III, and a generic set (comma separated) for import into other programs. Hence a presupposition of using this CD is access to and knowledge of a suitable database program. For this review Access V2.0 was used, and everything worked smoothly.

The core data on the CD are a record of deaths in England and Wales by gender, age group, and cause of death, for every year from 1901 to 1995. While much of this is not new (annual mortality statistics have been published for some time), the electronic format, and amalgamation of data is an important and very welcome development. Indeed, as the ONS’ descriptive leaflet says, ‘The early years have been painstakingly entered manually from paper records of the day’. As users of ONS statistics will know, age groupings are well suited to analysis in relation to health and social care. As well as pre-school and school age breakdowns, and 10 yearly ranges for working age adults, there is the useful split between those who are older or very old (over 85s).

Causes of death relate to the prevailing International Classification of Diseases (ICD), from the first issue up to the latest in use in 1995, ICD9. Additional data files list the various ICD dictionaries with their codes. There is also a useful set of population figures for every year, broken down by gender and age group.

The range of uses of the data is determined by the program within which they are lodged, so can be subject to the usual queries and report frameworks of whatever is your favoured database. For the most part the uses will range over demographic and mortality analysis, perhaps looking at trends over the years, or at age and gender differences. Likely users will be researchers, and those involved in developing trends and projections for planning purposes.

This is not an exciting CD - it has no soundtrack or fancy graphics, none of the gimmicks that so often appear on packages with limited substance. This package is all substance, a huge amount of data, nicely prepared for analysis. However accessible, in principle, much of the data were in the past, this CD is a huge step forward in bringing demographic material to our fingertips, and adding flexibility to the ways in which we can use it. The price is also low, so is within the range of researchers and planners, making it very definitely a CD worth having.

Now the new electronic format has been established, what next? We may reasonably assume updates as more recent data comes available. Can we look for more of the historic data, such as area breakdowns? We can only hope that somewhere in the back rooms of ONS the painstaking manual entry continues.

The journal has now ceased publication (2003)