The optimal size of attributor for use with the University of Manchester Drug Misuse Database

This paper describes the anonymous, attributable code which is applied to different individuals when they are reported to the regional drug misuse databases using the University of Manchester system. It then reports on the effect of removing selected data items included in the attributor on the syst...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Addiction (Abingdon, England) England), 1996-10, Vol.91 (10), p.1547-1550
Main Authors: CRABBE, TIM, DONMALL, MICHAEL
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Addiction
Automatic Data Processing
Biological and medical sciences
Codes
Data bases
Data Collection
Drug abuse
England
England - epidemiology
Female
Humans
Information Systems
Male
Manchester
Medical Records Systems, Computerized
Medical sciences
Mental health
Organization of mental health. Health systems
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Reproducibility of Results
Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry
Substance-Related Disorders - epidemiology
United Kingdom
Universities
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Summary:This paper describes the anonymous, attributable code which is applied to different individuals when they are reported to the regional drug misuse databases using the University of Manchester system. It then reports on the effect of removing selected data items included in the attributor on the system's abuity to distinguish between different drug users reported to the database. All of the attributable codes that did net use the full set of data items were found to reduce the system's ability to distinguish between the reporting of new drug users and new episodes of drug use for users previously reported to the database.
ISSN:0965-2140
1360-0443
DOI:10.1046/j.1360-0443.1996.9110154713.x