ArticleBMJ open2021
Validation of ethnicity in administrative hospital data in women giving birth in England: cohort study.
Article in BMJ open, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using classification and regression trees (CART) to investigate unknown ethnicity records in NHS emergency care data.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Inequalities in Preterm Birth in England: A Retrospective National Cohort Study Focusing on Deprivation and Ethnicity, Using Routinely Collected Maternity Hospital Data.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2025Article
- Disparities in Stillbirths in England: Analysis of A Population-Based Study of 1.3 Million Births.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2025Observational
- Emergency Maternal Hospital Readmissions in the Postnatal Period: A Population-Based Cohort Study.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2025Article
- Article
- Quality of ethnicity data within Scottish health records and implications of misclassification for ethnic inequalities in severe COVID-19: a national linked data study.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Asian-White disparities in obstetric anal sphincter injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis.AJOG global reports · 2024Review
- Understanding ethnic inequalities in stillbirth rates: a UK population-based cohort study.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Obstetric interventions and pregnancy outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in England: A nationwide cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo describe the accuracy of coding of ethnicity in National Health Service (NHS) administrative hospital records compared with self-declared records in maternity booking systems, and to assess the potential impact of misclassification bias.
designSecondary analysis of data from records of women giving birth in England (2015-2017).
settingNHS Trusts in England participating in a national audit programme.
participants1 237 213 women who gave birth between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2017. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: (1) Proportion of women with complete ethnicity; (2) agreement on coded ethnicity between maternity (maternity information systems (MIS)) and administrative hospital (Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)) records; (3) rates of caesarean section and obstetric anal sphincter injury by ethnic group in MIS and HES.
results91.3% of women had complete information regarding ethnicity in HES. Overall agreement between data sets was 90.4% (κ=0.83); 94.4% when collapsed into aggregate groups of white/South Asian/black/mixed/other (κ=0.86). Most disagreement was seen in women coded as mixed in either data set. Rates of obstetrical events and complications by ethnicity were similar regardless of data set used, with the most differences seen in women coded as mixed.
conclusionsLevels of accuracy in ethnicity coding in administrative hospital records support the use of ethnicity collapsed into groups (white/South Asian/black/mixed/other), but findings for mixed and other groups, and more granular classifications, should be treated with caution. Robustness of results of analyses for associations with ethnicity can be improved by using additional primary data sources.
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