MORGAM Manual
Data communication between the Participating Centres and the MDC

Routine data checking criteria

© National Institute for Health and Welfare and the MORGAM Project investigators Last updated: 2007-01-16 For more information, please contact Zygimantas Cepaitis (firstname.lastname@thl.fi) or Kari.Kuulasmaa (firstname.lastname@thl.fi)

Here you find the criteria used for the routine data checking in MORGAM. If you have any comments on them, please do not hesitate to contact the MDC.

The MPC must use the MORGAM Data Error Checking Program to check the data for correctness and consistency before sending them to the MDC. The MORGAM Data Error Checking Program and the instructions for using it are available at the MORGAM Web site at http://www.ktl.fi/morgam/a/data/.

Routine data checking criteria (Edit Specifications):

• Form 20: MONICA survey data
• Form 21: Additional baseline data
• Form 30: Baseline data addition 2
• Form 25: Follow-up data
• Form 27: Coronary events inventory
• Form 22: Coronary events
• Form 28: Stroke events inventory
• Form 23: Stroke events
• Form 29: Venous thromboembolic events inventory
• Form 26: Venous thromboembolic events
• Multi-form Edit specifications

NOTE: Like in the MONICA data checking, the checking criteria pick out two kinds of situations:

1. Data values which are illegal. These may be undefined values of single data items, or contradictions between the values of several data items. Such situations always require a correction.
2. Unusual data values. These are data values which are possible but uncommon, and should be checked for correctness. Typical examples are
   • the tails of continuous distributions, which have big influence on the mean values, in particular if caused systematically by incorrect placing of the decimal point, and
   • value "9" for a continuous variable, when the values for missing data would be "99". In such cases the value "9" should be checked to make sure that it was not miscoded missing data.

   Unusual values detected by the checking criteria should not be changed unless they are found to be incorrect. However, the MDC will need a confirmation that all such values have been checked.