Activity Agreements National Implementation 2011-12

ANNEX 1: Data Limitations and Quality Assurance

• Coverage - We have received data from 25 of 32 Scottish LAs. This is either because LAs have not recorded any leavers or drop-outs from their programme or because they have not submitted a return to the Scottish Government.
• Reporting Period - Data for 2011-12 submitted after 19 July 2012 or where the reporting period is unclear has been excluded from this analysis.
• Valid sample - to be included in the final 'valid sample' individuals must have signed up and then either completed or dropped out of their Activity Agreement between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012. Individuals who were referred but didn't sign up or who are currently undertaking an Activity Agreement have been excluded.
• Quality Assurance - This data is not 100% clean. We have excluded invalid data, missing cases and duplicates, but the data was submitted manually by external delivery partners and is therefore subject to errors which cannot be identified.
• Duplicate Cases - where duplicate cases were identified through the quality assurance process, these have been excluded from the analysis.
• Missing Data - there is a high percentage of data missing on destinations and some other key fields (up to 50%). Destinations data is therefore presented here as a percentage of the total number of individuals for whom we have data and not the total sample.