Reliability of the U.S. Army Ambulatory Care Data Base (ACDB) Study: Methodology and Clinical Findings

摘要

During the study period, January 1986 - September 1987, researchers collected data on 3.1 million patient encounters (visits) at six participating Army hospitals. After the data collection phase of the ACDB study, study team members conducted a comprehensive 5 month review to determine a data reliability score for each participating hospital and clinical specialty. The study team reviewed over 9,000 randomly selected visits with their supporting medical records. They evaluated variables of interest with a specially developed scoring instrument which they used to assign numerical weights for the selected variables. Reliability mean scores were computed for each hospital and clinic for the two data collection phases. Phase One (I) data was collected during the period January 1986 through April 1987. Phase Two (II) was accomplished from May through September 1987 using modified versions of the original data collection forms. The reliability mean score for the Phase I data was 8.57(9 was the maximum score) with a standard deviation of 1.27 (n=7,589). The reliability mean score for the Phase II data was 8.50 with a standard deviation of 1.31 (n=1,426). These results indicate a high degree of reliability between the key variables on the ACDB visit forms and the corresponding official patient medical record. (SDW)