Cause of Death Statistics

Summary

Strengths: In the future, the registry will participate in the cross-national Health Expenditure by Diseases and Conditions (HEDIC) study. The registry is well linked with other national registries (Cancer and Birth and Marriage statistics) and a portion of the microdata is made available to the public annually. Through the cause of death form, basic socio-demographic data is collected, which enables researchers to analyse particular groups of the population, such as migrants, and based on gender and age. Weaknesses: Data accuracy and completeness depends on a physician completing the form and the local registry submitting it, which may result in inconsistency of some of the information.

Type of data

Data Source
Registry

Type of Study
Other: Registry

Data gathering method
Other: Physician-completed form

Access to data

Conditions of access

Type of available data (e.g. anonymised microdata, aggregated tables, etc.)
Anonymised Microdata

Formats available

Coverage

Coverage Years of collection, reference years, and sample sizes
Data collection ongoing since 1970 (42 years). The sample includes all deaths registered in Austria each year. This was approximately 76,479 deaths in 2011.

First year of collection
1970

Stratification if applicable
Disaggregated data is available by year, by residential district, by gender, age, marital status, age of surviving partner, cause of death, country at birth, nationality at death, religion, and place of death.

Base used for sampling

Geographical coverage and breakdowns
Communities, political districts, NUTS 3-Regions, States, NUTS 1

Age range
No age range specified

Statistical representativeness
Population representative

Coverage of main and cross-cutting topics
Data is collected on cause of death according to 78 categories, sociodemographic information about the deceased, as well as marital status. Corresponds to Health and Performance Topic

Linkage

Standardisation
ICD (International Classification of Diseases)

Possibility of linkage among databases
Linked to registry of births and marriages, and Cancer statistics (Krebstatistik)

Data quality

Entry errors if applicable
No errors reported Plausibility checks are conducted annually before final results are released. Coders receive training annually in an effort to reduce the number of entry errors and in cases of missing data, phone calls are placed to the person who filled out the form.

Breaks
No breaks reported

Consistency of terminology or coding used during collection
As of 2009, persons of Austrian origin residing abroad at time of death are not captured in this data set; Coders receive training annually and are updated on new codes and new terminology as needed to ensure a high level of consistency.

Governance

Contact information
Anita Mikulasek and Barbara Leitner
Statistik Austria
Guglgasse 13
1110 Vienna Austria Phone: Anita Mikulasek: 00431711287275/Barbara Leitner: 00431711287262
Email: anita.mikulasek(at)statistik.gv.at / barbara.leitner(at)statistik.gv.at
Url: http://statcube.at/superwebguest/login.do?guest=guest&db=degestorbene_ext

Timeliness, transparency
Data is collected and sent electronically to Statistik Austria monthly. Preliminary data is available monthly for the previous month, and final results are available for the previous calendar year via the online database (STATcube). A snaphsot of cause of death statistics are available in the annual Yearbook of Health Statistics published by Statistik Austria.