Glossary
Allied health professionals: Health care professionals other than doctors
and nurses. Includes groups such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists etc. (also known as professions allied to medicine or PAMs.)
All Age, All Cause, All Mortality (AAACM): This is a rate which is used to check how we are performing against the Public Sector Agreement (PSA) target to improve the health of the population and reduce inequalities. The target states we must, “reduce by at least 10% the gap in life expectancy between the fifth of areas with the worst health and deprivation indicators and the population as a whole by 2010”. The All Age All Cause Mortality (AAACM) rate per 100,000 is used on an annual basis to evaluate local progress against this target.
Baseline: A measure taken before the introduction of any treatment so that there is a comparison by which the effects of any treatment can be observed.
BME Groups: Black and Minority Ethnic Groups.
Case management: A system for assuring effective delivery of services and maintaining access to resources for individuals with multiple, changing service needs.
Case study: A detailed analysis of an individual programme or person. Case studies may be performed on several programmes simultaneously to allow qualitative comparisons of aspects of the programs.
Clinical effectiveness: How well a drug, treatment or package of care works to produce good outcomes for patients.
Clinician: A health care professional providing patient care, eg a doctor, nurse or physiotherapist.
Cochrane Library: The Cochrane Library consists of a regularly updated collection of evidence-based medicine databases including the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (reviews of randomised controlled trials prepared by the Cochrane Collaboration). The Cochrane Library is available on CD-ROM and on the internet.
Comparison group: Individuals whose characteristics (such as race/ethnicity, gender, and age) are similar to those of the programme participants. These individuals may not receive a service, or may receive a different service, activity or product. As part of the evaluation process, the experimental (or treatment) group and the comparison group are assessed to determine which type of services, activities, or products provided by the programme produced the changes.
Cost-benefit analysis: A type of economic evaluation where both costs and benefits of health care treatment are measured in the same monetary units. If benefits exceed costs, the evaluation would recommend providing the treatment.
Cost-effectiveness: How expensive treatment and care are compared to how much benefit they offer to patients. In cost-effectiveness analysis, the outcomes of different interventions are converted into health gains for which a cost can be associated, for example cost per additional heart attack prevented.
Confidence Intervals (CI): A range around a value, which gives an idea of certainty about the accuracy of the value. Wide confidence intervals indicate a lack of certainty, whereas narrow confidence intervals indicate more precise estimates. We usually interpret a 95% confidence interval as the range of effects within which we are 95% confident that the true effect lies.
Confounding factor: Something that introduces uncertainty and bias into an observed outcome, complicating interpretation.
Correlation: A statistical measure which tells us how associated or related different variables are to each other.
Cross-sectional study: A cross-section is a random sample of a population, and a cross-sectional study examines this sample at one point in time.
Data analysis: The process of systematically applying statistical and logical techniques to describe, summarise, and compare data collected.
Database: An accumulation of information that has been systematically organised for easy access and analysis.
Demographics: The statistical characteristics of human populations such as age, race, ethnicity, and sex.
Department of Health: The Department of Health (DH) exists to improve the health and wellbeing of people in England.
Directly Standardised Rates (DSR): The overall rate that would occur in a standard population age-structure if it experiences the age-specific rates of the observed population.
Effectiveness: The extent to which a specific treatment or intervention, when used under usual or everyday conditions, does what it is intended to do, eg control or cure an illness. (Clinical trials that assess effectiveness are sometimes called ‘management trials’.)
Epidemic: A disease that spreads rapidly through a segment of the human population, such as everyone in a given geographic area; a military base, or similar population unit; or everyone of a certain age or sex, such as the children or women of a region. Epidemic diseases can be spread from person to person or from sources such as food or water.
Epidemiology: The study of the distribution and determinants of health and disease and applying this knowledge to the control of health issues.
Evidence-Based Review: The use of the current best evidence when making decisions about a certain topics.
External validity: The extent to which study results can be generalised to other populations and/or other settings.
Health Needs Assessment: A systematic method for reviewing the health and wellbeing needs of a population. Usually conducted so that organisations can agree commissioning priorities that will improve the health and wellbeing outcomes and reduce inequalities in their populations.
Health Equity Audit: a systematic process for reviewing inequalities in the causes of ill health and access to effective services for a defined population. The outcome should be to ensure that findings result in actions to reduce inequalities that are agreed and incorporated into policy, plans and practice.
Incidence: The number of new cases of a disease that occur in a specified population during a specified time period.
Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD): The Index of Multiple Deprivation takes a number of factors covering a range of health, economic, social and housing issues and combines them into a single deprivation score for each small area in England. This allows areas to be ranked according to their level of deprivation. The Indices of Deprivation was calculated in 1999, 2002, 2004 and most recently in 2007.
Indirectly Standardised Rates: The ratio of the observed number of events that would be expected if age-specific rates were applied to the particular population’s age structure. A common example is the standardised mortality ratio (SMR).
Informed consent: The permission granted by a participant in a research study after he/she has received comprehensive information about the study.
Intervention: Health care action intended to benefit the patient, eg prescription drugs, surgical procedures, psychological therapy etc.
Life expectancy: the average length of life of individuals in a population.
Lower Super Output Area (LSOA): There are 32,482 Lower Super Output Area’s in the country, each LSOA equates to roughly around 1,500 people. There are 207 LSOA’s in Wirral.
Methodology: This defines outcome measures, the choice of a research design, sampling, sample size, and choice of data systems.
Mortality: The ratio of the total number of deaths to the total population.
Mosaic: Mosaic is a geo-demographic population classification tool which can be used to segment the population according to the type of neighbourhood in which they live. It is constructed from a range of data sources including the Census, consumer behaviour and lifestyle factors and is a useful tool for gaining more in-depth insight into the behaviour and beliefs of the population. Mosaic segments the population into 11 Groups and 61 Types, based on postcode.
Mosaic Origins: A piece of software which works out the part of the world from which people’s forebears are most likely to have originated based on their forename and surname. It is useful when ethnicity information is patchy as it gives organisations a good indication of the ethnic make-up of their population.
National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE): NICE is a special health authority responsible for providing patients, health professionals and the public with authoritative, robust and reliable guidance on current ‘best practice’.
Objectives: What you plan to do with your proposed program within the given period
Open-ended questions: Questions in an interview or survey format that allow respondents to answer as they choose, rather than having to select a predefined alternative
Pilot (test/programme/project): A ‘trial run’ with a few subjects to assess the appropriateness and practicability of the test/programme/project.
Pilot study: A small scale ‘test’ of the research instrument. For example, testing (piloting) a new questionnaire with people who are similar to the population of the study, in order to highlight any problems or areas of concern, which can then be addressed before the full-scale study begins.
Population projections: Calculations which show potential future population figures, based on current and previous population figures.
Prevalence: The total number of persons living with a specific disease or condition.
Primary care: Health care delivered to patients outside hospitals. Primary care covers a range of services provided by GPs, nurses and other health care professionals, dentists, pharmacists and opticians.
Probability: How likely an event is to occur, eg how likely a treatment or intervention will alleviate a symptom.
Public Service Agreement (PSA): Public Service Agreements are the Government's high-level priorities. They set out the improvements that the Government wants to achieve and the performance indicators which will be used to measure progress. Each PSA is underpinned by a Delivery Agreement which outlines how improvements will be achieved, and who will be accountable for delivery.
Qualitative data: Data presented in narrative form, such as the information collected from focus groups or key informant interviews.
Quantitative data: Data presented in numerical terms, such as survey data and data from epidemiologic reports.
Relative Risk (RR): The ratio of two risks, usually the risk of a disease in a group of individuals exposed to some factor, divided by the risk in unexposed individuals.
Representative: This means that a sample is similar to the population from which it was drawn, and therefore can be used to draw conclusions about that population.
Research and Development: Developing evidence to inform and underpin health and social care policy and commissioning research focused on the needs of patients and the public.
Sample: A group of subjects selected from a total population with the expectation that studying the group will provide important information about the total population.
Secondary care: Care provided in hospitals.
Statistically significant: A measure of whether an observed difference or relationship is larger or smaller than would be expected to occur by chance alone; statistical results are often considered to be significant if there is less than a 5% chance that they would have occurred by chance alone.
Surveillance: The ongoing and systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data about health, disease or health conditions.
Synthetic Estimates: Used when ‘real’ data is unavailable or when national surveys (such as the Health survey for England) is too small to provide reliable estimates, synthetic estimates are calculated using statistical modelling techniques.
Systematic Reviews: A systematic review is a literature review focused on a single question which tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesise all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic reviews are generally regarded as the highest level of medical evidence by evidence-based medicine professionals. An understanding of systematic reviews and how to implement them in practice is fundamental for professionals involved in the delivery of health care.
Target populations: Groups of people who are to be reached through some action or intervention. Groups are often defined based on a combination of characteristics such as race or ethnicity, age, gender, risk factor/behaviour, and geographic location.
Trust: A trust in an NHS organisation responsible for providing a group of health care services. An acute trust provides hospital services. A mental health trust provides most mental health services. A primary care trust buys hospital care on behalf of the local population, as well as being responsible for the provision of community health services.
Validity: The extent to which a survey question or other measurement instrument actually measures what it is supposed to measure; for example, a question that asks young adults how often they use a condom is valid if it accurately measures their actual level of condom use.
Variable: A characteristic of finding that can change or vary among different people or in the same person over time; for example, race or ethnicity varies among individuals, and income varies for the same individual over time.
Well-being: A concept combining an individual’s health, their quality of life, and their satisfaction.