Background

Over many years, successive national public health intelligence organisations have published guidance on statistical methods, data processing policies and procedures, various aspects of data presentation and other topics. These have included technical briefings from the Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO), spreadsheet tools, software packages and technical guidance documents from Public Health England (PHE) and updated guidance from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID).

Purpose

This guidance is intended to ensure that statistics published in Fingertips and other reports by the national public health intelligence function, are produced using consistent, best-practice methodology.

The guidance provides:

• transparency about methods used for indicators
• a standard reference for consistent indicator metadata

As the organisations have evolved, the format of guidance has also. This latest publication replaces historic documents with a consistent set of guidance in a new format, taking the opportunity to check that guidance remains relevant and updating when required. In its first versions it will not incorporate all previous guidance, which will remain alongside it in Fingertips. As it is developed, supplanted guidance documents and tools will be removed. The new guidance will also fill gaps that have arisen over the last few years.

Feedback

If you have any comments on the content or format of the guidance, or any suggestions for improvement, please contact the public health intelligence methods team, with the subject ‘Technical guidance query’.

Update history

Page last updated: August 2024