Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, UK.
Population, Policy and Practice Research and Teaching Department, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London, UK.
Int J Popul Data Sci. 2022 Apr 27;7(1):1718. doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v6i1.1718. eCollection 2022.
Administrative data are a valuable research resource, but are under-utilised in the UK due to governance, technical and other barriers (e.g., the time and effort taken to gain secure data access). In recent years, there has been considerable government investment in making administrative data "research-ready", but there is no definition of what this term means. A common understanding of what constitutes research-ready administrative data is needed to establish clear principles and frameworks for their development and the realisation of their full research potential.
To define the characteristics of research-ready administrative data based on a systematic review and synthesis of existing literature.
On 29 June 2021, we systematically searched seven electronic databases for (1) peer-reviewed literature (2) related to research-ready administrative data (3) written in the English language. Following supplementary searches and snowball screening, we conducted a thematic analysis of the identified relevant literature.
Overall, we screened 2,375 records and identified 38 relevant studies published between 2012 and 2021. Most related to administrative data from the UK and US and particularly to health data. The term research-ready was used inconsistently in the literature and there was some conflation with the concept of data being ready for statistical analysis. From the thematic analysis, we identified five defining characteristics of research-ready administrative data: (a) accessible, (b) broad, (c) curated, (d) documented and (e) enhanced for research purposes.
Our proposed characteristics of research-ready administrative data could act as a starting point to help data owners and researchers develop common principles and standards. In the more immediate term, the proposed characteristics are a useful framework for cataloguing existing research-ready administrative databases and relevant resources that can support their development.
行政数据是一种有价值的研究资源，但由于治理、技术和其他障碍（例如，获得安全数据访问所需的时间和精力），在英国并未得到充分利用。近年来，政府在使行政数据“可用于研究”方面进行了大量投资，但对于这一术语的含义并没有明确的定义。需要对构成“可用于研究”的行政数据的特征有一个共同的理解，以便为其开发和实现其全部研究潜力建立明确的原则和框架。
根据现有文献的系统回顾和综合，定义“可用于研究”的行政数据的特征。
2021 年 6 月 29 日，我们系统地在七个电子数据库中搜索了（1）同行评议文献（2）与“可用于研究”的行政数据相关（3）用英语撰写的文献。在进行了补充搜索和滚雪球筛选后，我们对确定的相关文献进行了主题分析。
总体而言，我们筛选了 2375 条记录，确定了 38 项发表于 2012 年至 2021 年的相关研究。这些研究大多与英国和美国的行政数据有关，特别是与健康数据有关。文献中“可用于研究”一词的使用不一致，并且与数据可用于统计分析的概念有些混淆。通过主题分析，我们确定了“可用于研究”的行政数据的五个定义特征：（a）可访问性，（b）广泛性，（c）策划，（d）文档记录和（e）为研究目的增强。
我们提出的“可用于研究”的行政数据特征可以作为帮助数据所有者和研究人员制定共同原则和标准的起点。在更直接的层面上，所提出的特征是对现有的“可用于研究”的行政数据库和相关资源进行分类的有用框架，这些资源可以支持它们的开发。
