ICF Australian User Guide V1.0

The disability data elements can be used to:

• build specific-purpose data collections including data elements consistent with national standards

• relate two or more data sets by mapping existing data elements to the NCSDD standard data elements

• guide data collection methods.

The following examples of each of these purposes illustrate the potential benefits of these types of use.

The first steps in building a data collection are to determine its main purpose, the main information needed from it and the main users.

Suppose, for example, that we want to record the number of employees with disabilities in a particular industry sector. To achieve this, we would create a personnel data system that includes data elements based on the data elements in the current Data Dictionary.

We could then relate data resulting from the collection to data from the Australian Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, thereby monitoring the achievements of equal employment opportunity goals in relation to numbers of people in the population with similar activity limitations. We could also identify the environmental modifications needed to make the workplace more suitable for people with disabilities.

For another example, see Section 10.1 on how the ICF and NCSDD V2.0 disability data elements were used in the redevelopment of a major national data set for the Australian disability services sector.

Section 3.2 gives an example of how the presence of ICF concepts in disability service definitions and in population survey data enabled population data to be related to service definitions and data on supply. These common elements allowed the AIHW to estimate unmet needs for these services.

The main purpose of the national data dictionaries is to place standard data definitions and data elements, with guides for use, in the public domain, so as to promote consistent and high quality data collection in Australia. The inclusion of standard data elements in the national data dictionaries will be an important step in operationalising the ICF in data collections.