National Sports Injury Data Strategy

Data sources that have already been identified for inclusion in the NSIDA are the National Hospital Morbidity database (NHMD) and the National Coronial Information System (NCIS). As the NHMD and NCIS only represent a small fraction of all sport and active recreation injuries, it is important to investigate additional data sources for the NSIDA, such as emergency department data, sporting club incident reports, insurance data, survey data, school sport injury data, and general practice and allied health data.

Most sources of sport and active recreation injury data vary in the types and amounts of information being collected, quality (e.g. accuracy, completeness, consistency), and format. Consultation feedback on the draft National Sports Injury Data Strategy highlighted the need for resources to be developed to assist data collectors with expanding, improving, and standardising their data for inclusion in the NSIDA.

Data collection manual

The National Sports Injury Data Asset manual was developed to assist sport and active recreation organisations, individual clubs, sports medicine professionals, first aiders and researchers to understand what information will be collected as part of the NSIDA, as well as how and why this information is collected. Software vendors will also find this manual useful when developing or improving their digital platforms to assist users with collecting information required for the NSIDA. 

This manual provides guidance on:

• key concepts and definitions that will be used in the NSIDA
• privacy, confidentiality and consent
• items that will be included in the NSIDA
• processes for collecting and submitting information for the NSIDA when it becomes available.

This manual should be used alongside the Australian Sports Injury Data Dictionary (ASIDD) to ensure that the NSIDA captures important information on injuries, in a consistent manner, across the sport and active recreation sector.

Sports injury data dictionary

The ASIDD provides an update to the 1998 Australian Sports Injury Data Dictionary created by the Australian Sports Injury Data Working Party in collaboration with the Australian Sports Injury Prevention Taskforce and Active Australia (Australian Sports Injury Data Working Party 1998). The ASIDD describes how sport and active recreation injury data will be defined, structured, and represented across Australia for the NSIDA. It provides strict descriptions on each unit of data (known as a data element) included in the NSIDA to ensure that data are collected in a consistent way across the different data sources, allowing comparisons to be made with the data.

A range of demographic data elements have been included in the updated ASIDD to capture information on priority population groups, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) people, who are disproportionately affected by injuries. Inequities need to be reflected in the data captured by the NSIDA to inform injury prevention strategies that reduce these disparities.

Technical details about the data that will be included in the NSIDA can be found on the AIHW’s metadata online registry, METEOR.

A non-technical version of the ASIDD is also available below.

Reviewing data standards and collection methods

When data is shared for inclusion in the NSIDA, it will be assessed for suitability, ethical acceptability, compliance with standards described in the ASIDD, and missing data. Where data limitations exist, the AIHW will also work with committees, groups, and organisations to periodically review the NSIDA, as well as promote systematic improvements in how sport and active recreation injury data are collected.

Data linkage

Data linkage is a powerful process for identifying multiple appearances of people within one database and for combining information about people across different databases while still preserving privacy (and subject to ethical approval and permission from data providers). Linked data identifying a sports injury is currently limited to data sources such as the National Integrated Health Services Information Analysis Asset (NIHSIAA), which can link repeated hospitalisations and some other administrative datasets. 

While the NSIDA will not collect identifying information on injured people (e.g. name, address, and date of birth), the demand for linked health data may require the AIHW to consider collecting identifiable data. This would allow the NSIDA to capture sport and active recreation injuries across the entire healthcare system.

Any changes made to the NSIDA would need to be communicated to data providers. Data collection resources would also need updating to accommodate changes to consent, collection, storage, privacy, and security.