Annex 4 Understanding the data

It is emphasised that the information held on the Database relates to new patients/clients. The definition of ‘new’ is (a) the person is attending the particular service for the first time ever, or (b) the person has attended before but not within the previous six months. Thus the statistics do not reflect the total number of Drug Misusers seen by services during any period.

Further, the database does not collect information on the non-client work in which most specialist projects are involved, nor measures the number of contacts or amount of time spent with clients. The data is usually recorded at or around the time of the initial face to face contact and no measure of outcome is included. It would therefore be inappropriate to use the data for any overall performance evaluation of individual drug services.

By means of matching on certain criteria (initials, date of birth and sex) an adjustment is made for the double counting of individuals who may have attended more than one service during the period. With the exception of tables 1-3 (which are based on contacts) all the tables are based on these adjusted figures. The veracity of any “matches” identified cannot be guaranteed; it is likely that some individuals may have been wrongly matched and, conversely, some true matches may have been missed. Full names and addresses are not recorded on the forms returned to ISD.

Misuse of alcohol may be reported to the database in circumstances only when it is secondary to some other drug of misuse. This is reflected in the relatively small incidence of alcohol misuse reported in table 21.

In Scotland, data collection formally began in August 1990 with the Information & Statistics Division (ISD) of the NHS in Scotland assigned responsibility for the Database. Similar systems were set up in England and Wales at the same time.