title: The time taken to register a death.
abstract: This article analyses delays in the registration of death and discusses their effect on mortality statistics. It is shown that the longest delays arise when deaths are the subject of a coroner's inquest, in particular deaths in road traffic accidents. These delays mean that it may be many months before an acceptable proportion of deaths occurring in a year have been registered, so affecting how early a reliable extract of annual data can be taken. It also shows that the difference in the number of deaths occurring and the number registered in a year is strongly influenced by the weekdays on which holidays fall at the New Year.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Devis
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rooney
mesh_terms: D002423:Cause of Death; D003334:Coroners and Medical Examiners; D003644:Death Certificates; D004739:England / Q000453:epidemiology; D006693:Holidays; D006801:Humans; D009026:Mortality; D012042:Registries / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013997:Time Factors; D014852:Wales / Q000453:epidemiology