Hello all!
I have a situation where some of the data I get will be “suppressed”: For example, due to privacy concerns/regulations, statistics with numbers (data-elements) less than 5 cannot be given to DHIS2. Usually this is done by coding the element with a special value (or missing).
So you will have possible values (assuming the
- A number >=5
- Missing value/NULL (no observation)
- ‘.’ - to indicate 0-4
Another use of suppressed data is if the indicator (number of positive tests/total tests) is very close to 1 (indicating for example that everyone that was tested has a given disease).
I see no such datatypes available, and it of course causes problem when used to make indicators or aggregations.
What is best practices here?
The obvious candidate in the first case is to use 2, with the convention that it could be any number between 0 and 4.
For the second case (all tested are positive) - I see the need for the extra field.
Have there been discussion/need of another datatype that does support the setting “it’s a small number, but I can’t tell you what”
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