NCIS - data quality and its ability to provide timely and
accurate information on work-related traumatic fatalities
in Australia
NATIONAL OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY COMMISSION
Canberra, Australia
December 2002
FURTHER INFORMATION AND USE OF THIS PUBLICATION
 Commonwealth of Australia 2001
ISBN 0 642 70594 1
This work is copyright. It may be reproduced in whole or part subject to the inclusion of an
acknowledgment of the source and no commercial usage or sale. Reproduction for purposes
other than those indicated above require the written permission of the Commonwealth
available through AusInfo. Requests and inquiries should be addressed to the Manager,
Legislative Services, AusInfo, GPO Box 1920, Canberra ACT 2601.
The suggested citation is: NCIS - data quality and its ability to provide timely and accurate
information on work-related traumatic fatalities in Australia. National Occupational
Health and Safety Commission: December 2002.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
iii
LIST OF TABLES
v
LIST OF FIGURES
vi
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
vii
Introduction
vii
Main findings
vii
Conclusions
viii
INTRODUCTION
10
AIMS
11
METHODS
11
Approval for Access
11
Access Via the Web
11
Speed of Access
12
Identification of Work-Related Cases
14
Data Used in the Review
14
Final Selection Criteria
16
Merging Files
16
Identifying Work-Related Fatalities
16
Analysis
17
RESULTS
18
General Description of Overall File
18
Overall Reporting
18
Identifying Work-Related Cases
19
Inspection of the Police Description of Circumstances
19
NCIS Activity at the Time of the Incident
22
Basic Description
22
Validity
22
NCIS Work-Related Data Element
23
Basic Description
23
Validity
24
Final Decision on Work-Related Fatalities
26
Assessment of the Coverage of Work-Related Fatalities
27
Cases with an Appropriate Police Description of Circumstances
27
Comparison Between the NCIS, NDS and WRF2
28
Using the NCIS Activity at the Time of the Incident
32
iii
Using the NCIS Work-Relatedness Data Element
32
Basic Review of Main Data Elements
32
Problems with Case Type and Intent
34
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
35
Overall
35
Identification of Work-related Fatalities
35
Areas for Improvements
36
CONCLUSIONS
36
REFERENCES
38
ABBREVIATIONS
39
APPENDIX ONE
40
iv
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Data elements useful for identifying work-related cases ....................................................... 13
Table 2: External cause deaths by jurisdiction of Coroner's investigation. 1 July 2000 - 30 June
2001. Actual and expected1. Number and percent. ............................................................ 18
Table 3: Presence and adequacy of police description of circumstances of external cause deaths.
By jurisdiction. Only external cause deaths with a known mechanism. 1 July 2000 30 June 2001. Number and percent..................................................................................... 19
Table 4: Presence and adequacy of police description of circumstances of external cause deaths.
By jurisdiction and mechanism. Only external cause deaths with a known
mechanism. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number and percent.......................................... 20
Table 5: Classification on the basis of the police description of circumstance. External cause
deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number and per cent. ................................................ 21
Table 6: NCIS activity at the time of incident. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June
2001. Number and per cent................................................................................................. 22
Table 7: Comparison of NCIS activity at the time of incident with the work-related
classification on the basis of the police description of circumstance. Only files with
an adequate police description. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001.
Number. ............................................................................................................................... 23
Table 8: NCIS work-related data element. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001.
Number and per cent............................................................................................................ 24
Table 9: Comparison of NCIS activity at the time of incident with NCIS work-related data
element. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number. ............................. 24
Table 10: Comparison of NCIS work-related data element with work-related classification on
the basis of the police description of circumstance. Only files with an adequate
police description. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number. ............. 25
Table 11: Final classification of work-related status of cases. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000
- 30 June 2001. Number and per cent. ................................................................................ 26
Table 12: Comparison of proportion of classifiable NCIS files that were work-related to
classified proportions of work-related deaths from WRF2. External cause deaths. 1
July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Per cent. .................................................................................... 28
Table 13: Number of fatalities in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD. Data was recorded
in 1999-2000 in the NCIS and NDS. WRF2 data is the average for 1989-1992. ................ 29
Table 14: Percentage of fatalities in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD, estimated from
thee databases. NCIS and NDS data was recorded in 1999-2000. WRF2 data is the
average for 1989-1992. ........................................................................................................ 29
Table 15: Distribution of fatalities by industry in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD. Data
was recorded in 1999-2000 in the NCIS and NDS. WRF2 data is the average for
1989-1992. ........................................................................................................................... 31
Table 16: Percentage of known status for selected data elements. For all deaths and workrelated deaths. External cause deaths. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Per cent..................... 33
v
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Distribution of fatalities by occupation in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD.
Data was recorded in 1999-2000 in the NCIS and NDS. WRF2 data is the average
for 1989-1992. ..................................................................................................................... 30
vi
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Introduction
The National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (NOHSC) has reviewed the
content and quality of the National Coroners Information System (NCIS) database with a
view to assessing the suitability of the NCIS to provide timely and accurate information on
work-related fatalities in Australia. There is currently no on-going and comprehensive source
of such information.
Australian work-related fatalities recorded between July 2000 and June 2001 in the NCIS
were reviewed in this study. Only cases available at end September 2001 were reviewed to
determine which were work-related fatalities.
Main findings
The review found that the NCIS dataset was very large comprising of 3,546 cases. This
presented a significant challenge to NOHSC in accessing the cases. Access is normally
attained through downloading data from the NCIS website via the Internet. This proved
impractical since the process was painstakingly slow and data integrity could not be
maintained. NOHSC is grateful to Monash University National Centre for Coronial
Information (MUNCCI) for copying the NCIS data to a CD ROM which proved the only
practical medium through which NOHSC could access the data to carry out the review and
statistical analysis of the full NCIS dataset.
Inspection of the NCIS dataset indicated that it was not possible to rely on a single coded data
field to adequately identify work-related fatalities. The methodology for identifying all workrelated fatalities in Australia required a multi-faceted approach that relied on the police text
description of the circumstances surrounding the incident resulting in fatality, the workrelatedness data element and the activity at the time of incident. Some other data fields were
also used (e.g. cause of fatality, object causing fatality) where these suggested a work-related
fatality.
A review of work-related cases identified by police text descriptions of the incident revealed
that jurisdiction coverage was very poor especially in NSW (9%) and VIC (30%). The review
found that police text descriptions provided adequate information enabling work-relatedness
to be determined in only 1 in 4 cases. The adequacy of the text descriptions was poorest in
NSW (6%) and VIC (17%) and best in WA (71%) and the ACT (74%). Further analysis of
work-related cases identified using police text descriptions where an external cause of injury
was present suggested that the adequacy of text descriptions was highly dependent on the
circumstances of the incident. Nationally, only 1 in 4 cases with information on external
causes had enough information to allow a definitive work-related classification.
NOHSC found that overall, reporting of coronial cases by jurisdictions to the NCIS was
incomplete. For example, coverage of WA cases was 7% lower than what was expected based
on the second work-related study (WRF2, 1998). It was estimated the NCIS was
underreporting work-related fatalities in WA and VIC when the National Data Set for
Compensation-based Statistics (NDS) is used as the yardstick. The NCIS tended to report
more cases in the small jurisdictions such as TAS and NT compared to the NDS. There were
significant differences in the distribution of workers by industry and occupation between the
NCIS and either the NDS or WRF2. For example, the NCIS had proportionately fewer
fatalities than the NDS and WRF2 in the Transport and Storage, Wholesale Trades and
vii
Electricity, Gas and Water and Mining industries. Further, fatalities among Labourers and
Related Workers in NCIS were proportionately four times those in the NDS or WRF2.
Ninety-two of the 3,546 NCIS cases (2.8%) were classified as work-related using the incident
activity data element alone. This data element was missing in 340 of the 3,546 cases (9.6%).
The work-related data element and the incident activity field identified comparable numbers
of work-related fatalities. However, evidence suggests that codes for the work-related data
may need refining to further enhance this alignment.
The case-status field in the NCIS provides information on whether a coronial inquest is still
ongoing (i.e. open case) or complete (i.e. closed case). This review found that main data
elements (e.g. incident activity, mechanism, object, occupation and industry) were incomplete
in most open cases and cases identified as work-related using the work-related data element.
In general, closed cases had better coverage of the main data elements. Among the main data
elements, incident activity and place had the highest coverage (80-100%) and occupation and
industry both had the lowest (0-0.3%).
There was generally a higher chance for a given data element to have text information rather
than coded information. For a given data element, there was a higher chance that the
information was missing if it related to the secondary or tertiary level of classification.
About 169 cases that were identified by NOHSC as working and commuting and 20
bystanders were coded by occupation and industry following the ASCO (ABS 1997) and
ANZSIC (ABS 1993) coding systems. The occupation and industry codes will be given to
MUNCCI for uploading to the NCIS.
Conclusions
The review has concluded that the NCIS is not yet able to reliably identify all work-related
fatalities in Australia. Notwithstanding, there is no other system in Australia, other than
compensation-based systems such as the NDS, capable of identifying such cases. It is
suspected that compensation based systems under-report work-related fatalities mainly
because most some self-employed (and military personnel) are excluded. Of course, also
missing from compensation-based data were cases where no compensation of any kind is paid
– e.g. where there were no relatives. The NCIS could potentially be a surveillance system for
occupational fatalities providing a wide workforce coverage because it is not restrained by
working arrangements or compensation status. The NCIS can potentially provide timely
surveillance information about age, gender, external cause of injury and bodily location of
injury all of which are important to the detection of emerging injury trends and formulation of
appropriate OHS preventive measures as well as the identification of priority areas for further
research. Further, the NCIS is potentially capable of providing time series information on a
given injury type and therefore information for monitoring the effectiveness of OHS
preventive measures.
At present, identification of work-related fatalities in the NCIS cannot be reliably achieved on
the basis of a single coded data field. Consequently, a time consuming strategy involving a
manual comparison of coded values and free text, with external criteria, is required. This
situation should improve as a result of changes already adopted by MUNCCI. It is unlikely,
however, that within the next twelve month period, the NCIS will achieve the ideal of being a
comprehensive source of data on work-related fatalities in Australia.
viii
This review has identified a number of improvements necessary to the NCIS before it can be
confidently used as a national surveillance system for work-related fatalities in Australia. The
review found that of the 3,546 cases recorded in the NCIS, only 2 in 5 were closed cases,
meaning that a coronial inquest was complete. Further, only 1 in 3 work-related case was
closed. It is therefore strongly recommended that NOHSC continues to have access to all
NCIS cases (both open and closed) in order to obtain optimal coverage.
NOHSC has produced a separate report which provides a blueprint for statistically analysing
and reporting work-related fatalities estimated by the NCIS in the future (NOHSC, 2002). The
report is based on work-related fatalities identified using the police text descriptions of the
circumstance surrounding the fatal work-related incident.
ix
INTRODUCTION
Until now, there has been no on-going source of information in Australia providing all
work-related fatalities (Moller, 1994; Harrison and Frommer, 1986). The only ongoing collected data capable of identifying work-related fatalities is the
compensation-based, NDS. It is suspected that the NDS underreport work-related
fatalities since it covers conforms to strict work-arrangements, covers only persons in
the workforce and does not cover military personnel or some self-employed persons.
National surveillance systems for traumatic occupational fatalities exist in OEDC
countries such as the USA (Herbert and Landrigan, 2000; NIOSH, 2000; Feyer et al.,
2001), the United Kingdom (HSE, 2002) and New Zealand (Langley et al., 1997;
Feyer et al., 2001). Since all work-related fatalities are (by definition) external cause
fatalities, and all external cause fatalities are supposed to be reported to, and
investigated by, a coroner, the coronial system, is potentially a source of information
on all work-related traumatic fatalities. This has been the basis for the two workrelated fatalities studies conducted by NOHSC, and which provided the only
comprehensive and reliable information on work-related fatalities in Australia over
the last twenty years. These two studies covered the periods 1982 to 1984 inclusive
(Harrison and Frommer, 1986; Harrison et al., 1989) and 1989 to 1992 inclusive
(WRF2, 1998). Unfortunately, until very recently, coronial records were paper based
and poorly indexed from an injury prevention viewpoint. This meant that identifying
fatalities of interest, and extracting the relevant information from the cases files, was
very time consuming and resource intensive (Harrison and Frommer, 1986). The
work-related fatalities studies, and other similar studies of other public health issues,
could therefore only be conducted on an irregular basis.
The National Coroners Information System (NCIS) was designed to overcome many
of these problems. The NCIS is an electronic database and supporting infrastructure
for all coronial cases in Australia (Stathakis and Scott, 1999; Owens and Lightfoot,
2000). The information is provided in the form of coded data elements, structured
text and free text, with coding done largely by clerical officers in each coronial office.
Data quality and IT integrity is monitored and supported by the managing
organisation at Monash University, the Monash University National Centre for
Coronial Information (MUNCCI), which is based at the Victorian Coroner’s Court.
Development work began on the NCIS in February 1998 (Owens and Lightfoot;
2000). Capital funding of $165,000 was provided by Monash University, and the
Victorian Department of Justice provided $165,000. In June 1998 the Commonwealth
Department of Health and Aged Care provided development funding of $355,000.
Funding for the NCIS for 1999/2000 was received from the Commonwealth, of which
NOHSC contributed $50,000 and a proportionate amount from the States and
Territories totalling $250,000. The State and Territory figure was calculated at
$10,000 base fee plus a fee per population. Commonwealth funding of the NCIS
development will continue into the financial year 2002/03 after which a fee-forservice payment system will be considered.
NOHSC has been closely involved in the development and implementation of the
NCIS since its inception (Owens and Lightfoot; 2000). This is because the NCIS is
potentially a very valuable source of information for occupational health and safety
purposes. Some of its advantages over other datasets include coverage of all persons
10
regardless of compensation status or work arrangement (i.e. covers self-employed
persons) and timeliness, as it is an on-going data collection. With the NCIS now in
operation, NOHSC wishes to assess how useful the NCIS, as implemented, is for
OHS purposes, and to describe the available information on work-related fatalities
recorded in the NCIS. The assessment process has been on going, with identified
problems reported to MUNCCI and addressed by them as and when they were able.
Therefore, some of the problems or issues documented in this report have already
been resolved. This is noted where appropriate.
AIMS
In May 2001, the Information Committee of NOHSC approved a project to assess the
quality and completeness of coverage of work-related fatalities by the NCIS, to code
work-related cases in the NCIS by occupation and industry and to prepare a final
report on the NCIS project by the end of June 2002.
The NCIS project has two main aims. The first aim is to review the adequacy of the
NCIS as a source of information on work-related fatalities and to suggest areas of
improvement, if relevant. The second aim is to summarise the information on workrelated fatalities to provide an up-to-date description of work-related fatalities in
Australia.
This report focuses on the first aim. The second aim will be covered in a separate
report.
METHODS
The NCIS began operation in 2000. Access was available to external users from
1 July 2001. Cases have been entered systematically from 1 July 2000.
Approval for Access
Access to the NCIS by external users is only provided after approval by an ethics
committee established by MUNCCI and based at Monash University. A second ethics
approval, provided by a Western Australian ethics committee, is required for access to
data from the Western Australian coronial system. NOHSC provided the first
application for external access and received approval from both the Monash
University and Western Australian ethics committees. The approval process was
thorough, straightforward, and appears appropriate.
Access Via the Web
The main intended method of obtaining information from the NCIS is via a secure
internet
connection,
entered
via
the
MUNCCI
web
site
(http://www.vifp.monash.edu.au/ncis/). This connection is password protected. The
speed and ease of access to the site has been considerably improved since it first
began operation, and it now functions well as a source of information on individual
cases or small groups of cases selected against specific criteria. However, a number
of issues have been identified, and while many of these remain, most are being
addressed at the moment. The structure and function of the web site are documented
11
elsewhere by MUNCCI (Owens and Lightfoot; 2000; NCIS, 2002). They are briefly
summarised here where necessary to give context to the comments.
Speed of Access
Access is much easier out of normal business hours, or at least early in the morning
and late in the afternoon. It is not unusual for requests for information to be “timed
out”, and the connection broken, although this was much more common when a
specific request for data extraction from the database was being made than when
information from a particular case was being sought. It is not clear to what extent
access problems arise from the internet connection as opposed to the set up of the
NCIS itself.
There are five sections in the NCIS site.
The first of these is “Home”, from which the other four sections can be accessed.
The “NCIS Search” section allows a specific case to be requested, based on various
identifying criteria such as case number, name, age, sex and court. This section also
allows queries to be designed, accessed and downloaded.
The “Case” section provides access to the five main forms relevant to each case. It is
only relevant if a case has already been selected and opened. This is the section that
contains the information of interest in the NCIS. The five forms within this section
are “Case detail”, “Time location”, “Procedure”, “Mechanism”, and “Linking
numbers”. These forms are discussed in more detail later.
The key data elements of interest in terms of identifying work-related cases are shown
in Table 1.
12
Table 1: Data elements useful for identifying work-related cases
Case detail
Work-relatedness
Case-type (on
notification and
on completion)
Description
This should be the main coded data element for identifying work-related cases.
However, its completion may initially be unreliable for the first 18 months of the
system, because the data element was only introduced in late 2001.
This is used to distinguish between natural and external cause fatalities.
An external cause fatality is defined as any fatality that resulted directly or
indirectly from environmental events or circumstances that caused injury,
poisoning and other adverse effects.
All other fatalities are natural cause fatalities, unless the cause cannot be
determined.
Intent (on
notification and
on completion)
Police file
This is used to validate coding and identify work-related cases.
Usual occupation
text
Each file should have a police description of the circumstances of the event.
These descriptions are the best way of validating the coding, but the quality and
depth of the descriptions vary widely. Some descriptions are detailed but do not
address the question of work-relatedness. This is especially the case in motor
vehicle crashes. Other descriptions are too brief to provide much useful
information. At present, many cases do not have accessible police descriptions,
primarily because of problems at the coronial office end of the system, although
there have also been some difficulties in attaching some of the police description
files to the relevant case. This latter problem is being corrected by MUNCCI, and
the former problem is being addressed by MUNCCI in conjunction with the
coronial offices.
This is sometimes helpful when trying to put the police description of
circumstances into context.
Time location
Incident location –
levels 1 and 2
Incident activity –
levels 1 and 2
Fatality date
Procedure
Finding
Cause of fatality
Ib
This data element is required to exclude suicides (coded as ‘intentional selfharm’).
Fatalities in certain locations are likely to be work-related.
This should identify all work-related fatalities of workers and commuters.
This identifies fatalities occurring in the time period of interest.
If present and comprehensive, the coronial finding is the best source of
information on the circumstances of fatality and should serve as the definitive
document used to identify work-related fatalities. However, to date, there are
very few findings in the NCIS, and nearly all of them come from the Northern
Territory, though not all completed NT cases have the findings attached.
This often has a brief description that identifies a fatality as work-related (e.g.
“industrial accident”). However, it is unlikely that text here will definitively
identify a fatality as work-related without other supporting information from,
more specific, data elements.
13
Table 1 (continued) Data elements useful for identifying work-related cases
Mechanism
Mechanism levels
1, 2 and 3
Object category 1
and description
Vehicle details
Linking numbers
WorkCover
number
These may be useful as broad screening data elements. For example, the majority
of (but by no means all) electrocutions will be work-related. Note that there are a
primary, and two secondary, mechanisms, each with three levels.
Fatalities involving certain objects are likely to be work-related. Note that there
are a primary, and two secondary, objects, each with three levels.
These data elements actually describe the crash details for motor vehicle crashes.
The four related data elements may be useful in identifying work-related road
incidents by specifying working vehicles. For example, nearly all motor vehicle
crashes involving semi-trailers will be work-related.
If there is a number present, it means that WorkCover has probably investigated
the case, and that the case is probably work-related. However, nearly all cases
have no information in this data element.
Identification of Work-Related Cases
Cases of interest in the review of work-related fatalities were persons who died as a
result of external causes sometime in the 12-month period 1 July 2000 to June 30
2001, and whose fatality was related to work. The definition of work was the same as
that used for the second work-related fatalities study, except that only working
persons, commuters and bystanders were included. The second work-related fatalities
study also included a number of other groups whose fatality was related to work in a
more indirect way. These groups were volunteers, students, persons performing home
duties and persons fatally injured on farms but not due to obvious farm work. These
groups did not form part of the current review. The relevant definitions are available
in most publications arising from WRF2 (1998), and are documented in detail in the
main report on pages 143-152. These are summarised in APPENDIX ONE.
A several stage approach was used to identify fatalities as work-related. These were
initially conducted independently, to allow a comparison to be made between the
different approaches. The results from the various approaches were then combined to
produce a final dataset of work-related fatalities.
Data Used in the Review
Cases of interest were those that met, or might meet, the criteria of all non-suicide
external cause fatalities that occurred in the period 1 July 2000 to 30 June 2001
inclusive. This period was chosen as it was the earliest 12-month period for which
information from the NCIS is available. Since it can take many months for the
coronial investigation process to be completed, many cases from this period were
expected to still be open at the time the data was to be reviewed.
Data was first obtained from the MUNCCI in September 2001. This information was
always intended as draft information that could be used to develop the screening and
analysis protocol. It was then intended that data would again be extracted in early
2002, by which time it was hoped that most of the cases from the time period of
14
interest would have been closed. This second data extraction occurred in February
2002 and forms the basis of the review.
Although the criteria for selection were straightforward, extracting these cases was
not simple. The case-type on completion could not be relied upon to identify external
cause cases because this had not been completed for many cases. For the same
reason, the intent on completion could not be relied upon to identify non-suicide
cases. To a lesser extent, date of fatality could not be relied upon because it was
missing in some instances. Therefore, an inclusive approach was taken with the data
supplied by MUNCCI, and unwanted cases excluded later. The February 2002 data
set comprised all cases entered into the dataset except the following:
- case type equal to natural cause at both notification and completion;
- intent equal to intentional self harm at both notification and completion; and
- Queensland cases.
The February 2002 information was extracted by MUNCCI staff according to
NOHSC requirements. Initially, an attempt had been made by NOHSC to extract the
data using the enquiry procedure via the NCIS web site. However, this system proved
too inflexible to obtain the large class of cases with varying selection criteria that
were required for this project.
The data was supplied in four data files – one containing the main case data, including
cause of fatality; one containing information from the time-location form; one
containing information from the mechanism form; and one containing the police
descriptions of circumstances.
All files uniquely identified a case with the combination of the year, state and
sequence data elements. Not every case appeared in all four MUNCCI files, because
certain case types (e.g. natural causes) would not be expected to have all forms
completed, and certain cases had no information entered into a form. A case with a
blank form in the NCIS did not appear in the MUNCCI data file corresponding to that
form.
The main case-fatality file contained the main data elements of interest, being most of
those from the "Case detail" form. All potential cases appeared in this file.
The time-location file contained information on the dates of incident and fatality, the
activity at the time of incident (and fatality), and the place of activity and fatality.
Virtually all potential cases appeared in this file. However, many cases had more than
one row in the file, as there was a separate row for each of the ‘incident’, ‘fatality’,
‘last seen alive’ and ‘found’ aspects of the form. Also, some cases had only one
entry, either for date of incident or date of fatality, because the other information had
not been entered.
The mechanism file contained information on mechanism and object from the
mechanism form. Multiple entries per case were possible in this form also, because of
the facility to enter multiple mechanisms and agencies in the mechanism form.
The police description file contained the police descriptions for each case. There was
an entry for each case, but many of the cases did not have an associated description.
15
Final Selection Criteria
The final dataset consisted of cases that met one of the criteria for each of date of
fatality, case type and intent.
Date of fatality
Date of fatality between 1 July 2000 and 30 June 2001 inclusive; OR
No date of fatality, but date of incident between 1 July 2000 and 29 June 2001
inclusive; OR
No date of fatality or date of incident, but date of notification strongly implying the
fatality occurred between 1 July 2000 and 30 June 2001 inclusive.
Case type
Case type on completion equal to external cause; OR
Case type on completion coded as unknown or missing, and case type on notification
was external cause; OR
The cause of fatality (described in the four cause of Fatality text data elements)
clearly external cause, or clearly related to an External Cause, regardless of the final
case type (but note that cases coded as natural cause on notification and completion
would not have been in the initial dataset, so their description of cause of fatality was
not inspected).
Intent
Intent on completion was not equal to Deliberate Self-harm.
Merging Files
Data supplied in September 2001 were in the form of Excel files, and included most
of the data elements in the NCIS. Data supplied in February 2002 were flat data files.
The data was initially imported into Excel, partially matched by hand, and partially
cleaned and checked. The edited Excel files were then made into comma-delimited
(CSV) files and imported into SAS, where the files were merged.
Identifying Work-Related Fatalities
Prior to applying the above selection criteria and merging the files, the police
description of circumstances from the September files were read and classified as to
their work-relatedness, based on the study definitions. Fatalities were classified as
working, commuting, bystander (separately as workplace or road bystander), not
work-related, indeterminate because of inadequate information in the text description,
and indeterminate because there was no text description. No other information in the
NCIS was used in making this determination.
The police description of circumstances obtained in February 2002 contained all the
descriptions provided in the September 2001, plus several hundred more. (The
content of some of the text descriptions for Victorian cases corrupted the importation
of the file into Excel, requiring a labour-intensive manual correction of the file prior
16
to its use.) The new descriptions were read and classified as had been done for the
September cases. Descriptions classified from the September file were not reclassified.
A final classification into the work-related and other categories was made using the
merged files. The definitive classification based on the police description of
circumstances was used as the most valid measure of work-relatedness. Definitive
classification was possible for 744 fatalities. For the remaining 2,802 fatalities,
classification was made in a series of steps. Those with an incident activity code of
working or commuting were assigned the relevant classification. Fatalities coded as
working or commuting were assigned as working fatalities. Next, fatalities assigned
as indeterminate because of inadequate information in the text description were given
a final classification of indeterminate. Then, fatalities with a code of work-related
using the NCIS work-related data element were accepted as bystanders. Remaining
fatalities were either classified as not work-related, if they had a definitive incident
activity code, or as unknown if they had a missing or unknown activity code.
Working fatalities were further classified as workplace and work-road on the basis of
the location and mechanism of the incident. Fatalities that involved a motor vehicle
crash on a public road were classified as work-road. All other working fatalities were
classified as workplace.
Bystander cases were classified as workplace or road on the basis of the text
description classification or, if there was no description, on the basis of the location
and mechanism of the incident.
Analysis
The analysis of the work-related determination and cases is the focus of this review,
but some general data description is also presented here.
Estimates of the expected numbers and proportions of various parameters were made
using the information collected during WRF2. Relevant information available from
this study included the total and state-specific number and percentage of coronial
files. This provided an indication of the likely coverage of all external cause cases by
the NCIS. Similar information on working, commuting and bystander cases was also
available, both overall and stratified by various characteristics such as state, place of
occurrence and mechanism. The findings from the current review were compared to
the WRF2 findings to provide an insight into the completeness of coverage of workrelated cases by the NCIS. Since Queensland cases were not included in the data
upon which this review was based, Queensland cases were also excluded from the
WRF2 data used for comparison.
All analysis was performed using SAS and Excel.
17
RESULTS
General Description of Overall File
The main file sent by MUNCCI in February 2002 had 7,586 cases. The selection
procedure described above resulted in a final dataset for analysis of 3,546 cases.
Overall Reporting
The overall percentages suggested that there was an under-reporting to the NCIS of
cases from Western Australia, with only 4.2% of cases compared to an expected
11.4%. All the other jurisdictions except New South Wales and the Australian Capital
Territory had a lower than expected percentage of cases, but the differences were too
small to be sure that there was significant under-reporting. Consideration of the
number and percentage of cases reported in three-month periods during the 12 months
covered by the review supported a suspicion of problems with reporting of cases in
some jurisdictions. For example, the percentage of reported fatalities in each threemonth period varied from 4% to 34% in South Australia, whereas it could be expected
that there would be approximately 25% reported each quarter. Under-reporting in the
July to December 2000 period might be expected, since this was the first six months
covered by the NCIS, and this appears to have occurred in Tasmania. However, only
4% of South Australia's reported cases died in the final quarter. Similar problems of
significant apparent under-reporting in the final quarter were seen in Victoria (only
12% of reported cases), Western Australia (15%) and the Australian Capital Territory
(12%) (Table 2).
Table 2: External cause fatalities by jurisdiction of coroner's investigation. 1 July
2000 - 30 June 2001. Actual and expected1. Number and percent.
Number
- actual
- expected
Percent
- actual
- expected
Number
Jul-Sep 2000
Oct-Dec 2000
Jan-Mar 2001
Apr-Jun 2001
Total
Jurisdiction
WA
TAS
NSW
VIC
SA
1,765
1,657
1,014
1,215
304
425
150
472
125
168
113
155
75
63
3,546
4,153
49.8
39.9
28.6
29.2
8.6
10.2
4.2
11.4
3.5
4.0
3.2
3.7
2.1
1.5
100.0
100.0
462
470
414
419
1,765
345
313
234
122
1,014
98
103
90
13
304
27
64
37
22
150
15
23
52
35
125
33
26
25
29
113
19
23
24
9
75
999
1,022
876
649
3,546
18.0
42.7
24.7
14.7
100.0
12.0
18.4
41.6
28.0
100.0
29.2
23.0
22.1
25.7
100.0
25.3
30.7
32.0
12.0
100.0
28.2
28.8
24.7
18.3
100.0
Percentage2
26.2
34.0
32.2
Jul-Sep 2000
26.6
30.9
33.9
Oct-Dec 2000
23.5
23.1
29.6
Jan-Mar 2001
23.7
12.0
4.3
Apr-Jun 2001
Total
100.0
100.0
100.0
1: Expected on the basis of WRF2 results.
2: Percentage of all files in the relevant jurisdiction.
18
NT
ACT
Australia
Identifying Work-Related Cases
Cases were identified as being work-related using three main approaches:
- inspection of the police descriptions of circumstances;
- analysis of the activity at the time of the incident data element; and
- analysis of the general work-related data element.
Inspection of the Police Description of Circumstances
The definitive classifications of work-relatedness based on the police text descriptions
were used as a basis against which NCIS coded values could be compared. However,
only 1,213 cases (34%) had police text descriptions available at the time the data was
provided by MUNCCI, and only 744 cases (21%) had enough information in the
description to be assigned a definitive classification. (Information on about 1,500
further NSW cases was provided in late February, but this arrived too late to be
incorporated into the analysis). Descriptions were available for only 9% of fatalities
from New South Wales and 29% from Victoria, but virtually all fatalities from the
other jurisdictions had police descriptions. The adequacy of the descriptions for
allowing definitive classification of the work-relatedness of the fatality varied from
54% (in South Australia) to 76% (in the Australian Capital Territory), giving an
Australian value of 61%. This meant that only 21% of all fatalities in the NCIS had a
text description that allowed adequate classification of the work-relatedness of a
fatality (Table 3).
Table 3: Presence and adequacy of police description of circumstances of external
cause fatalities. By jurisdiction. Only external cause fatalities with a known
mechanism. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number and percent.
Jurisdiction
WA
TAS
NT
ACT
Australia
304
100.0
149
99.3
124
99.2
112
99.1
74
98.7
1,213
34.2
164
53.9
54.0
106
71.1
70.7
79
63.7
63.2
64
57.1
56.6
56
75.7
74.7
744
61.3
21.0
NSW
VIC
SA
Description1
- number
- %2
152
8.6
298
29.4
Adequate
description3
- number
- % description4
- % all fatalities5
108
70.0
6.1
167
56.0
16.5
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
Fatalities with a police description.
Percentage of all fatalities.
Fatalities with an adequate police description.
Percentage of all fatalities with an adequate police description.
Percentage of all fatalities.
19
The adequacy of the text description was strongly dependent on the circumstances of
the incident. Most fatalities that involved a motor vehicle crash on a public road did
not have an adequate text description. This was usually because the purpose of the
journey was not documented. This problem existed in all jurisdictions (nationally,
25% of such descriptions were adequate), and particularly in South Australia and
Tasmania, where the descriptions that were present were adequate in less than 20% of
cases. In contrast, the adequacy of text descriptions for non-motor vehicle crash
fatalities was very good, with 90% of such descriptions at a national level being
adequate for definitive classification of the work-relatedness of fatalities. However, it
should be noted that only 55% of all fatalities had a valid mechanism code and only
25% of all fatalities had both an adequate text description and valid mechanism code
(Table 4).
Table 4: Presence and adequacy of police description of circumstances of external
cause fatalities. By jurisdiction and mechanism. Only external cause fatalities with a
known mechanism. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number and percent.
SA
Jurisdiction
WA
TAS
NT
ACT
Australia
13
11.3
11.3
16
30.8
30.2
7
19.4
19.4
14
27.5
26.9
3
27.3
25.0
122
25.0
14.9
Known non-motor vehicle crash fatalities4
90
110
22
- number
89.1
92.4
88.0
- % description5
15.4
29.9
88.0
- % all fatalities6
1
100.0
100.0
61
80.3
80.3
34
94.4
94.4
29
100.0
100.0
347
89.7
31.0
NSW
VIC
Known motor vehicle crash fatalities1
16
53
- number
2
32.7
30.3
- % description
5.9
18.9
- % all fatalities3
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
Fatalities with an adequate police description and a motor vehicle crash mechanism code.
Percentage of all fatalities with a police description and a motor vehicle crash mechanism code.
Percentage of all fatalities with a motor vehicle crash mechanism code.
Fatalities with an adequate police description and a non-motor vehicle crash mechanism code.
Percentage of all fatalities with a police description and a non-motor vehicle crash mechanism code.
Percentage of all fatalities with a non-motor vehicle crash mechanism code.
Two of the main problems with the text descriptions that were present were
concentrated on the aspects of the circumstances important from a legal point of view
rather than an injury prevention point of view, and lack of inclusion of information on
the purpose of travel of persons involved in motor vehicle crashes.
20
Of the 1,213 cases with text descriptions, 5.4% were coded as working fatalities, 0.4%
as commuting, 0.7% as workplace bystander, 0.9% as road bystander, and 54% as not
work-related. The remaining 39% cases with a description had insufficient
information to allow the fatality to be definitively classified (Table 5).
Table 5: Classification on the basis of the police description of circumstance.
External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number and percent.
Work-relatedness
Not working
Working
Commuting
Bystander - work
Bystander - road
Inadequate information
No description
Total
1:
2:
3:
Number
655
65
5
8
11
469
2,333
3,546
Percentage of all files.
Percentage of all files with a police description.
Percentage of files with an adequate police description.
21
% all files1
n = 3,564
18.5
1.8
0.1
0.2
0.3
13.2
65.8
100.0
% all
descriptions2
n = 1,213
54.0
5.4
0.4
0.7
0.9
38.6
100.0
% all classified3
n = 744
88.0
8.7
0.7
1.1
1.5
100.0
NCIS Activity at the Time of the Incident
Basic Description
The work-related status of fatalities coded as indeterminate on the basis of the police
description, or which did not have a police description, was determined by using the
NCIS-assigned values of activity at the time of the incident and the work-related data
element. Fatalities where the activity at the time of the incident was coded 3.1 were
accepted as working cases, and those coded 3.2 were accepted as commuting cases.
Fatalities where the activity was coded 3.9 were accepted as working, on the basis of
the coding of activity for known work-related cases with a police description. One
hundred and twenty eight fatalities had an incident activity of working or “working or
commuting”. Another 16 were coded as commuting. Activity was unknown for 382
fatalities and missing for another 340, so no information on incident activity was
available for 20% of the fatalities (Table 6).
Table 6: NCIS activity at the time of incident. External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 30 June 2001. Number and percent.
Activity
Sport
Leisure
Working
Commuting
Working or commuting
Home duties
Resting, etc
Being nursed
Formal education
Other specified
Unspecified
Missing
Total
Number
100
548
92
16
36
105
534
195
2
1196
382
340
3,546
%
2.8
15.5
2.6
0.5
1.0
3.0
15.1
5.5
0.1
33.7
10.8
9.6
100.0
Validity
The activity codes of the 744 cases with a definitive classification based on the police
description are shown in Table 7. Seventy of these cases were definitively
categorised as working or commuting, of these, 44 (63%) had an incident activity of
working or commuting. Half of the remaining 26 were coded to another specified
activity, with general travel accounting for most of these. All five commuting cases
had an NCIS activity code of general travel. If the NCIS activity category of
“working or commuting” is accepted as meaning working, then 66% of the true
working cases had an NCIS activity code of working.
Again looking only at the 744 cases with a definitive work-related code, 46 of these
fatalities had an NCIS activity code of working, commuting or commuting and
working. There were two apparent errors in these - one of the working fatalities was
not work-related, and one of the commuting fatalities was actually a working fatality.
Another fatality classified as a road bystander fatality had an incident activity code of
22
commuting, which may have been correct if other information was available
(Table 7).
These results suggest that the NCIS activity coding system underestimates the number
of work-related fatalities amongst reported cases, with an underestimate of
approximately 32% for working cases and 60% for commuting cases.
Table 7: Comparison of NCIS activity at the time of incident with the work-related
classification on the basis of the police description of circumstance. Only files with
an adequate police description. External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001.
Number.
Activity
Sport
Leisure
Working
Commuting
Working or commuting
Home duties
Resting, etc
Being nursed
Formal education
Other specified
Unspecified
Missing
Total
Not working
22
74
1
0
0
13
223
56
1
166
91
8
655
Working
3
1
23
1
20
1
0
1
0
8
5
2
65
True classification
Commuting
Bystander
0
0
0
5
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
10
0
2
0
1
5
19
Total
25
80
24
2
20
14
223
57
1
189
98
11
744
NCIS Work-Related Data Element
Basic Description
The work-related data element was designed to identify all work-related fatalities,
regardless of whether the person was working, commuting or a bystander. Working
and commuting fatalities should be identifiable using the incident activity data
element. However, bystanders would, by definition, not have an activity of working
or commuting. Therefore, the incident activity data element cannot be used to
identify them. Fatalities that have an incident activity code other than working or
commuting, and an NCIS work-related code of one, should therefore be bystander
fatalities.
One hundred and sixty four fatalities (4.6%) were identified as work-related using this
data element, and 2,025 (57%) as not work-related. However, this information was
unknown for 38% of fatalities (Table 8).
23
Table 8: NCIS work-related data element. External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30
June 2001. Number and percent.
Work-relatedness
Not work-related
Work-related
Unspecified
Missing
Total
Number
2,025
164
1,254
103
3,546
%
57.1
4.6
35.4
2.9
100.0
The agreement between the work-related data element and the incident activity data
element for working cases was very good, with only two fatalities with an incident
activity coded as working or commuting not being identified as such by the workrelated data element (Table 9).
Table 9: Comparison of NCIS activity at the time of incident with NCIS work-related
data element. External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number.
Activity
Sport
Leisure
Working or commuting
Home duties
Resting, etc
Being nursed
Formal education
Other specified
Unspecified
Missing
Total
Not workrelated
57
274
1
40
444
98
2
850
246
13
2,025
Workrelated
0
7
142
0
1
2
0
6
4
2
164
Work-relatedness
Unspecified
Unknown
42
255
1
64
72
85
0
313
97
325
1,254
1
12
0
1
17
10
0
27
35
0
103
Total
100
548
144
105
534
195
0
1,196
382
340
3,546
Twenty fatalities were identified as work-related by the work-related data element but
had an activity code other than working or commuting, and another two had a missing
activity code. These fatalities were initially accepted as bystander cases, subject to
the gold standard classification made on the 744 fatalities classified on the basis of
their police description.
Validity
The NCIS work-related data element codes were compared to the definitive
classifications that were possible for 744 fatalities on the basis of the police
descriptions. Of the 70 fatalities definitively classified as working or commuting, 45
(64%) had an NCIS work-related code of work-related. Most of the rest were coded
as not work-related rather than as unknown. All five commuting cases had an NCIS
work-related code of not work-related (Table 10).
24
Again looking only at the 744 cases with a definitive work-related code, 53 of these
fatalities had an NCIS work-related code of work-related. Forty-nine of these
appeared to be correctly coded. The remaining four were actually not work-related
fatalities.
These results suggest that the NCIS work-related code under-estimates the number of
work-related fatalities amongst reported cases by about 40%.
Table 10: Comparison of NCIS work-related data element with work-related
classification on the basis of the police description of circumstance. Only files with
an adequate police description. External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001.
Number.
Work-relatedness
Not work-related
Work-related
Unspecified
Missing
Total
Not working
547
4
75
29
655
Working
15
45
4
1
65
25
True classification
Commuting
Bystander
5
15
0
4
0
0
0
0
5
19
Total
582
53
79
30
744
Final Decision on Work-Related Fatalities
On the basis of this approach, 149 cases were identified as working, 20 as commuting
and 30 as bystanders (16 as workplace bystander and 14 as road bystander). Working
cases were further classified as workplace and work-road on the basis of the location
and mechanism of the incident. Fatalities that involved a motor vehicle crash on a
public road were classified as work-road. All other working fatalities were classified
as workplace. There were 94 workplace fatalities and 55 work-road fatalities
identified. Unless fatalities had an NCIS activity code of indicating working or
commuting, fatalities that had an inadequate or missing text description were
classified on this basis, regardless of the NCIS activity code (Table 11). NOHSC has
coded the 169 cases identified as working and commuting by occupation and industry
following the ASCO (ABS 1997) and ANZSIC (ABS 1993) coding systems and will
give the codes to MUNCCI for uploading onto the NCIS.
Table 11: Final classification of work-related status of cases. External cause fatalities.
1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Number and percent.
Work-relatedness
Not working
Number
655
%
18.5
Working
- workplace
- workroad
- total
94
55
149
2.7
1.6
4.2
Commuting
20
0.6
169
4.8
16
13
29
0.5
0.4
0.8
466
13.1
No description
2,227
62.8
Total
3,546
100.0
Working and commuting
Bystander
- bystander - work
- bystander - road
- total
Inadequate information
26
Assessment of the Coverage of Work-Related Fatalities
One hundred and forty nine work-related fatalities of workers (working fatalities)
were identified in the NCIS for the 12-month period under review. There is no gold
standard against which to compare this number to directly gauge its validity.
However, information from WRF2 provides a good indication of what numbers might
be expected, with the proviso that a drop of 10% or 20% in the rate of fatality might
be expected as a result of possible improvements in OHS in the decade since the
period covered by WRF2. For this comparison, Queensland fatalities were excluded
from the WRF2 data because the available NCIS information did not include
Queensland fatalities.
Cases with an Appropriate Police Description of Circumstances
The classification of fatalities for which the police description allowed a definitive
classification to be made provides the best insight into the true level of work-related
fatality over the 12-month period under review.
Of the 744 fatalities that could be definitively classified, 8.7% were classified as
working cases. This compares to 8.2% of all coroner's files in WRF2 being classified
as working fatalities. Percentages of workplace and work-road fatalities were also
similar between the definitively classified files and WRF2. Assuming that the
classifiable fatalities are a representative sample of all the fatalities from the NCIS,
this result suggests that the number of working fatalities has not changed greatly
between the period covered by WRF2 and the 2000-2001 period covered by this
review (although the rate may have changed). It also suggests that those text
descriptions that do provide adequate information can be used to appropriately
identify working fatalities (Table 12). Note that it is likely that fatalities with
classifiable text descriptions are not a fully representative sample of all NCIS external
cause fatalities. This is because workplace fatalities are more likely to be able to be
identified or excluded on the basis of basic descriptive information than are work-road
fatalities, which often require an explicit statement regarding the purpose of the
journey to allow them to be identified or excluded (see Table 4 and the preceding
text). Assuming that the 744 fatalities are approximately representative of all the
3,546 external fatalities under review, the 65 working fatalities extrapolate to a figure
of about 310 working fatalities (3,546/744 * 65), compared to a predicted 340
fatalities based on WRF2 findings.
The finding regarding coverage of commuting and bystander fatalities is not as
encouraging as that for working fatalities. The percentage of fatalities identified as
commuting was much lower in the classifiable NCIS group than in WRF2 (0.7%
versus 2.9%). Similarly, the percentage was lower in the NCIS group for workplace
bystanders (1.1% versus 1.5%) and road bystanders (1.5% versus 2.4%). These
results suggest that the police descriptions are not a sensitive source of information for
identifying commuting fatalities. This is not surprising, because identifying a fatality
as involving commuting requires detailed information about the purpose of the
journey, since the vehicle involved will often not be an obvious work vehicle, such as
a truck. Similar problems seem to affect the identification of road bystander fatalities,
although not to the same extent, especially when it is considered that improvements in
road safety in the last decade may have decreased the proportion of road fatalities that
might be expected. (This may also have affected the expected number of commuting
27
fatalities.) In addition, the four years covered by WRFS included two incidents that
resulted in a significant loss of life for road bystanders, so the number of road
bystander fatalities expected as a result of the WRF2 results may be a little
exaggerated.
Workplace bystander fatalities also seem to be somewhat
underestimated in the NCIS using the work-relatedness and incident activity data
elements (Table 12).
Table 12: Comparison of proportion of classifiable NCIS files that were work-related
to classified proportions of work-related fatalities from WRF2. External cause
fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Percent.
Work-relatedness
% all classified1
n = 744
% of WRF2 files2
n = 16,612
Working
- workplace
- workroad
- total
5.6
3.1
8.7
5.6
2.6
8.2
Commuting
0.7
2.9
Working and commuting
9.4
11.1
Bystander
- bystander - work
- bystander - road
- total
1.1
1.5
2.6
1.5
2.4
3.9
1:
2:
Only files with an adequate police description
Excludes Queensland files.
Comparison Between the NCIS, NDS and WRF2
A study was undertaken to further assess how well the NCIS compared with the NDS
and WRF2. The NDS data was obtained from the NOHSC Online Statistics
Interactive (NOSI). The comparison carried out with the knowledge that the WRF2
data predated the NCIS and NDS data by 10-12 years and that the NDS being a
compensation-based system has particular attributes which are not necessarily similar
to those of the NCIS (e.g. age group coverage and work arrangements). In this
comparison, the Queensland data was omitted, as it is not currently reported in the
NCIS. Since the NCIS did not adequately identify bystanders in work-related
situations (especially on roads and highways), it was decided to include all bystanders in the NCIS data (see Table 11).
Overall, the total number of fatalities in the NCIS and NDS datasets were nearly
identical and about 60% of the number of fatalities recoded in the WRF2 dataset
(Tables 13). A closer scrutiny of the results reveals that the NCIS contained about the
same number and proportion of fatalities in NSW as the NDS (Tables 13-14).
However, the authors suspect a slight under-reporting in the NCIS because all NSW
files were not uploaded to this system when the study was carried out. Clearly, the
NCIS seriously under-reported the number of fatalities in the other large states namely
28
VIC and WA (and perhaps SA?). Data suggest that the NCIS reported more fatalities
in the small states (e.g. TAS and NT), especially compared to the NDS.
Table 13: Number of fatalities in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD. Data was
recorded in 1999-2000 in the NCIS and NDS. WRF2 data was the average for 19891992.
Jurisdiction
NCIS
WFR2
NDS
NSW
VIC
WA
SA
TAS
NT
ACT
107
27
8
24
19
13
0
141
83
46
31
17
13
2
105
48
23
11
3
6
0
Total
198
333
196
Table 14: Percentage of fatalities in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD,
estimated from the databases. NCIS and NDS data was recorded in 1999-2000. WRF2
data was the average for 1989-1992.
Jurisdiction
NCIS
WFR2
NDS
NSW
VIC
WA
SA
TAS
NT
ACT
54
14
4
12
10
7
0
42
25
14
9
5
4
1
54
24
12
6
2
3
0
Total
100
100
100
29
The single largest difference between the NCIS, NDS and WRF2 is that almost a third of the
occupations were unknown in the NCIS (Figure 1). Fatalities among Labourers and Related
workers in NCIS were proportionately four times those in the NDS or WRF2. Furthermore,
NCIS fatalities were proportionately fewer among Intermediate Production and Transport
workers compared to those shown in the datasets. In contrast, there were proportionately more
fatalities among Assistant Professionals in the NCIS. Fatalities among the Managers and
Administrators (including farmers) were proportionately the same across the datasets.
Figure 1: Distribution of fatalities by occupation in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD.
Data was recorded in 1999-2000 in the NCIS and NDS. WRF2 data was the average for 19891992.
30
Table 15 suggests that, unlike the NDS and WRF2, nearly a third of the NCIS is uncodeable
for industry. This was mainly because of either missing or insufficient text information to
allow coding of the NCIS data. In all three cases, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing and
Transport and Storage industries were among the most hazardous, albeit to differing extents.
The NCIS had proportionately fewer fatalities than the NDS and WRF2 in a number of
industries such as Transport and Storage, Wholesale trades and Electricity, Gas and Water
and Mining. Further, there were proportionately more fatalities in the Manufacturing and
Government Administration and Defence industry in NDS than NCIS or WRF2. The last
dataset had proportionately more fatalities in the Cultural and Recreational Services industry
than either the NCIS or NDS.
Table 15: Distribution of fatalities by industry in Australian jurisdictions, excluding QLD.
Data was recorded in 1999-2000 in the NCIS and NDS. WRF2 data is the average for 19891992.
NCIS
Number
%
Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
32
16.2
Mining
7
3.5
Manufacturing
12
6.1
Construction
16
8.1
Wholesale trades
1
0.5
Retail trade
17
8.6
Transport and Storage
29
14.6
Communication
1
0.5
Property and Business Services
11
5.6
Government Administration and Defence
9
4.5
Cultural and Recreational Services
7
3.5
Electricity, Gas and Water
0
0.0
Uncodeable
56
28.3
Total
198
100.0
Industry
31
NDS
Number
%
25
12.8
12
6.1
33
16.8
26
13.3
8
4.1
10
5.1
34
17.3
2
1.0
11
5.6
28
14.3
5
2.6
2
1.0
0
0.0
196
100.0
WFR2
Number
%
104
23.5
35
7.8
35
8.0
59
13.3
15
3.3
15
3.3
93
21.0
3
0.7
12
2.7
23
5.3
39
8.8
7
1.6
2
0.5
440
100.0
Using the NCIS Activity at the Time of the Incident
Earlier comparison of NCIS activity at the time of incident codes to the definitive workrelated codes suggested that the NCIS underestimates working fatalities by about 30%. This
underestimation is probably higher, as shown by comparison with WRF2 data. Using the
NCIS activity codes, and assuming that fatalities coded to the "working or commuting"
category were working fatalities, 128 working fatalities were identified. This compares to the
310 predicted on the basis of extrapolation from the definitively classified fatalities, and 340
predicted on the basis of WRF2. Similarly, the 16 commuting fatalities is a substantial
underestimation of the 121 commuting fatalities predicted by WRF2.
The activity codes cannot be used to examine the coverage of bystander fatalities, since there
is no specific bystander category in the activity data codes.
Using the NCIS Work-Relatedness Data Element
The NCIS work-relatedness data element was earlier shown to significantly underestimate
working and bystander fatalities identified by the definitive work-related codes, with only 49
out of 89 (55%) work-related fatalities identified, and a further four non work-related
fatalities identified as being work-related. In the entire 3,546 fatalities, only 164 were
identified as being work-related, compared to a predicted 624 working, commuting and
bystander fatalities based on WRF2 results, suggesting a coverage of work-related fatalities of
only about 25 - 30% using this NCIS data element.
Basic Review of Main Data Elements
An assessment was made of the main data elements for coverage and proportion of closed
cases. Results indicate that incident activity was available in a majority (80-94%) of cases
(Table 13). Close to 1 in 10 of the closed-cases had a missing incident activity. Incident place
was present in 9 out of 10 cases.
Data coverage for incident mechanism was highly dependent both the level of detail, being
poorest for the tertiary level, and on the case status, being excellent in the closed cases. Just
over half of open- and closed-cases and work-related cases had the mechanism of injury
recorded in the first and secondary levels. Coverage of object of injury was almost complete
in the closed-cases (96%) and in just over half of all cases (i.e., both open- and closed-cases)
and work-related cases.
Text information of usual occupation was available in some form in 77-89% of cases but
coded information was very sparse (0.5-19%). Information on occupation was poor regardless
of format (0-28%). A similar situation existed for all information on industry.
Data showed that only 2 in 5 cases were closed in the NCIS database. Further, only 1 in 3
work-related cases were closed. This strongly supports the need for NOHSC to have access to
all NCIS cases in order to determine work-relatedness.
32
Table 16: Percentage of known status for selected data elements. For all fatalities and workrelated fatalities. External cause fatalities. 1 July 2000 - 30 June 2001. Percent.
Data element
Incident activity
% all cases
79.6
Closed cases
89.5
Place
- level 1
- level 2
92.4
92.7
99.1
99.5
91.9
97.5
Mechanism – level 1
- Primary
- Secondary
- Tertiary
54.7
54.7
36.2
97.5
97.5
60.6
54.0
54.0
50.5
53.1
53.1
95.9
95.9
54.0
54.0
14.4
77.3
0.3
1.6
0.5
88.5
0.0
2.1
19.2
88.9
5.6
28.3
0.4
1.5
0.0
1.9
7.1
26.8
Object – level 1
- Primary
- Secondary
Occupation
- usual code
- usual text
- incident code
- incident text
Industry
- incident code
- incident text
Closed cases
42.3
na
33
% work-related cases
93.9
34.3
Problems with Case Type and Intent
Although the vast majority of these cases met the selection criteria, it is likely that some
suicides and natural cause fatalities were inadvertently included, and some external cause
cases possibly excluded. Some suicide cases were probably included because many cases
were missing the Intent on Completion, and these cases were not excluded unless the
description of the cause of fatality clearly showed that the case was a suicide. Inspection of
the police description of circumstances identified some cases that were clearly, or probably,
suicide cases, but checking and exclusion of every such case was beyond the scope of this
current review. Therefore, suicide cases that did not have an Intent on Completion, or had a
wrong Intent on Completion, are likely to have remained in the dataset. For similar reasons,
a small number of natural cause fatalities may have remained in the set. External cause
fatalities coded to natural cause at both notification and completion would not have been part
of the initial dataset sent by MUNCCI, and so would have been excluded. It is unlikely that
there would be many of them, but some of the cases that were sent by MUNCCI and which
had a Case Type on Completion of natural cause, were clearly external cause fatalities. So, it
is likely that at least a small number of external cause fatalities would have been excluded
from the initial dataset.
34
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Overall
The NCIS is potentially capable of providing timely and comprehensive information on workrelated fatalities in a way similar to the national surveillance systems for traumatic
occupational fatalities used in the USA (Herbert and Landrigan, 2000; NIOSH, 2000; Feyer et
al., 2001), New Zealand (Feyer et al., 2001) and the European Union (HASTE, 2002). It is
hoped that in the long term, the NCIS will provide information on time-related changes in the
incidence of traumatic injuries (Moller, 1994; WRF2, 1998) by jurisdiction, age, gender
occupation and industry. Before this is possible, the NCIS database requires some significant
enhancements in terms of content and quality. At present, the methodology to identify workrelated fatalities is not simple and this is largely a result of the way in which the data was
captured. In addition, the NCIS main data elements were incomplete.
This study found a significant underreporting of occupational fatalities in some jurisdictions
compared to what was expected using the WRF2 (1998) and NDS. The current study found
that jurisdiction coronial files were not fully uploaded to the NCIS at the time the study was
carried out. In fact, significant fluctuations were found in the number of jurisdiction coronial
files reported to the NCIS during each quarter between June 2000 and July 2001. It is
encouraging however, that from those fatalities that could be definitely classified on the
NCIS, the proportion of work-related fatalities was very close to that observed in the WRF2
(1998).
It is the finding of this study that some of the standard NCIS data elements (i.e. activity,
work-relatedness and external causes) under-estimate work-related fatalities. This is mainly
because of missing data or incomplete coding.
Work-related fatalities with classifiable police descriptions should be representative of all
work-related fatalities, although there may be an over-representation of workplace fatalities
compared to work-road fatalities. The study found that commuting fatalities were not well
identified using the current information in the NCIS, including the text descriptions, because
of inadequate text descriptions and inaccurate activity coding. A similar problem was noted
by a previous work-related injury study which was conducted in Australia between 1982 and
1984 (Harrison et al., 1989). Bystander fatalities are better reported than commuting fatalities,
but are still under-reported in the NCIS.
Identification of Work-related Fatalities
The study concluded that on the basis of fatalities with adequate police descriptions, workrelated fatalities can be reasonably identified using the NCIS. However, most descriptions of
non-motor vehicle crash fatalities contain enough detail to allow work-relatedness to be
confidently assessed. Most descriptions of motor vehicle crash fatalities were found not to
contain enough detail to allow work-relatedness to be confidently assessed.
35
Areas for Improvements
In order to make the NCIS fully operational in providing timely and accurate information on
work-related fatalities in Australia, significant work is needed to improve the NCIS data and
the processes involved in assessing work-related fatalities. For example, effort is required to
improve the:
- extraction of data from the NCIS database;
- completeness of reporting of cases to the NCIS;
- completeness and comprehensiveness of the police text description; and
- completeness and accuracy of codes, especially those related to work. Many NCIS
data elements were considerably incomplete.
Some of these improvements will be easier to achieve than others. For example, completeness
of data element and data coding should improve over time. Improving the details captured in
the text from police reports, however, is likely to take longer to improve the quality of the
data in the system. At present, the police reports are very important in assessing whether a
fatality is work-related. The Monash University National Centre for Coronial Information
(MUNCCI) is working on a proposal to implement a national standard police form that will
facilitate identifying work-related fatalities. This will be particularly useful in identifying bystanders in transport-related fatalities.
NOHSC access to the police text descriptions is vital for an adequate identification and
classification of work-related fatalities, because the relevant NCIS codes cannot be relied
upon fully at this stage. It is noted that many police descriptions do not contain adequate
information to allow classification of the fatalities.
Until significant improvements in the Internet access to the NCIS database are made, it is
essential that NOHSC receives data downloaded by the MUNCCI team and sent in the form
of flat or Excel files.
The study recommends that case type and intent should not be relied upon to provide accurate
indication of non-suicide external cause fatalities, because of incomplete data and, to a lesser
extent, apparently wrongly coded data.
Just over a third of the work-related cases were closed at the time when the study was carried
out. This means NOHSC access to open and closed cases is essential because cases are not
being closed early enough.
CONCLUSIONS
Australia requires a fully operational surveillance system for work-related fatalities, as do
other OECD countries. The NCIS could potentially fulfill this role. This system could
potentially provide timely surveillance information about age, gender, external cause of injury
and bodily location of injury all of which are important to the detection of emerging injury
trends and formulation of appropriate OHS preventive measures and identification of priority
areas for further research. Further, the NCIS is capable of providing time series information
on a given injury type and therefore information for monitoring the effectiveness of OHS
preventive measures.
As with any new system being proposed as an OHS surveillance tool, it was necessary for
NOHSC to appraise the accessibility of the NCIS database, to assess the quality of the data it
contains. At present, it must be concluded that the NCIS is not yet able to reliably identify all
36
work-related fatalities in Australia. Nonetheless, it was possible to identify about the same
number of fatalities from the NCIS data as in the NDS (although these may not have been
caused by the same mechanism/agency of fatality or from the same jurisdiction). It is also
encouraging that where fatalities can be classified in the NCIS, the proportion of work-related
fatalities in some occupations is very similar to that reported in the WRF2 and NDS. It is also
encouraging that the NCIS identified the same most hazardous occupations, as did the WRF2
and NDS. Identification of work-related fatalities cannot be achieved by sole reliance on
coded data for estimates of work-related fatalities, and as result, a time consuming strategy
involving a manual comparison of coded values and free text with external criteria is required.
This situation should improve as a result of changes already adopted by MUNCCI to capture
data on the NCIS. It is unlikely, however, that within the next twelve month period, the NCIS
will achieve the ideal of being a comprehensive source of data on work-related fatalities in
Australia.
NOHSC has identified a number of improvements necessary to the NCIS before it can be
used as a national surveillance system for occupational fatalities in Australia. Consistent with
the overall objective of this study, all cases identified as work-related and commuting were
coded by occupation and industry by NOHSC. The codes will be made available to MUNCCI
for uploading to the NCIS.
37
REFERENCES
Feyer, A.M.; Williamson, A.M.; Driscoll, T.; Usher, H.; Langley, J.D. 2001: Comparison of
work-related fatalities injuries in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand: Method
and overall findings. Injury Prevention 7:22-28.
Harrison J.E.; Frommer, M.S. 1986: Work-related fatalities in Australia. A review and
proposal for a study of traumatic work-related deaths. WorkSafe. Sydney, Australia.
Harrison J.E.; Frommer, M.S.; Ruck, E.A.; Blyth, F.M. 1989: Fatality as a result of workrelated injury in Australia. Medical Journal of Australia. 150: 118-125.
HASTE 2002: The European Health and Safety Database:
http://www.occuphealth.fi/e/eu/haste/
Herbert, R.; Landrigan, P.J. 2000: Work-related Death: A continuing epidemic. American
Journal of Public Health. 90(4): 541-545.
HSE, 2002: Health and Safety Statistics 2000/01. UK Government and Health and Safety
Commission Report. http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/2001/hsspt1.pdf.
Langley, J.D.; Clarke, J.; Marshall, S.W.; Cryer, P.C.; Alsop, J. 1997: Tractor fatalities and
Injury on New Zealand Farms. Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health 3(3): 145-159.
Moller, J. 1994: Coronial information systems: needs and feasibility study. National Injury
Surveillance Unit. Adelaide.
NCIS, 2002: Information Sheet For Government Departments And Agencies And Death /
Injury Surveillance Or Research Agencies.
NIOSH, 2000: Worker Health Chartbook, 2000. Fatal Injury. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication
Number 2002-117.
NOHSC, 2002: Work-related traumatic fatalities in Australia estimated by using the NCIS
police text description of the circumstance surrounding death. - June 2000-July 2001.
Owens, L.; Lightfoot, J.; 2000: The National Coroners Information System: A new death and
injury surveillance tool. Australasian Epidemiologist. 7.1: 24-30.
Stathakis, V.; Scott, G. 1999: Coronial Data: a comprehensive overview. HAZARD Edition
No. 38. Victorian Injury Surveillance System & Applied Research. Monash University
Accident Research Centre.
WRF2 1998: Work-related traumatic fatalities in Australia, 1989 to 1992. NOHSC. Canberra.
Australia.
38
ABBREVIATIONS
ABS
Australian Bureau of Statistics
ACT
Australian Capital Territory
AIHW
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
ICD-10-AM
International Classification of Diseases-10 Revision, Australia
Modified
ILF
In-Labour Force
MUNCCI
Monash University National Centre for Coronial Information
NCIS
National Coroners Information System
NDS
National Data Set for Compensation-based Statistics
NHMD
National Hospital Morbidity Database / Hospital Discharge Data
NOHSC
National Occupational Health and Safety Commission
NOSI
NOHSC Online Statistics Interactive
NSW
New South Wales
NT
Northern Territory
OHS
Occupational Health and Safety
QLD
Queensland
SA
South Australia
TAS
Tasmania
VIC
Victoria
WA
Western Australia
WRF2
Second Work-place Related Fatality (1989-1992)
39
APPENDIX ONE
The main definition for inclusion to the work-related fatality study was:
‘A person who suffered a non-suicide traumatic death, that occurred in Australia or to
Australian-based workers, to which workplace exposures contributed as a necessary factor
and which can be attributed, as an individual death, to those exposures.’
The study excluded all persons who:
• died as a primary result of diseases, such as cancers and heart attacks;
• committed suicide, even if there appeared to be some direct connection with work; and
• did not die as a result of their injuries.
Workers were defined as persons who were injured while performing some kind of activity
for pay, profit or kind (including commuting to or from work). The “working” group (which
excluded commuters) was divided into two subgroups - workplace and work-road. The
work-road group comprised workers who were killed in motor vehicle incidents on public
roads in the course of their work (note that this group did NOT include commuters). The
workplace group comprised all other workers who were fatally injured as a result of work
activity. These people were usually injured in some form of fixed workplace.
Commuters were persons killed whilst travelling to or from work.
Bystanders were persons who were not working but who were killed directly as a result of
someone else’s work activity. Workplace bystanders were any persons not working and
fatally injured as a result of workplace activities usually not associated with public roads or
public transport. Road bystanders were persons not working and fatally injured in a motor
vehicle incident on a public road (or on public transport) as a result of other people’s work,
where the working vehicle was primarily ‘at fault’ in the incident. Examples included
pedestrians or persons in vehicles hit by a semi-trailer whose driver had lost control of the
vehicle, or pedestrians or persons in vehicles struck by an emergency vehicle involved in a
high-speed chase.
The second work-related fatalities study also included a number of other groups whose death
was related to work in a more indirect way. These groups were volunteers, students, persons
performing home duties and persons fatally injured on farms but not due to obvious farm
work. These groups did not form part of the current review.
40