title: Validation of administrative health data for the pediatric population: a scoping review.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The purpose of this research was to perform a scoping review of published literature on the validity of administrative health data for ascertaining health conditions in the pediatric population (≤20 years).
  
  
  METHODS
  A comprehensive search of OVID Medline (1946 - present), CINAHL (1937 - present) and EMBASE (1947 - present) was conducted. Characteristics of validation studies that were abstracted included the study population, health condition, topic of the validation (e.g., single diagnosis code versus case-finding algorithm), administrative and validation data sources. Inter-rater agreement was measured using Cohen's κ. Extracted data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 37 articles met the study inclusion criteria. Cohen's κ for study inclusion/exclusion and data abstraction was 0.88 and 0.97, respectively. Most studies validated administrative data from the USA (43.2%) and Canada (24.3%), and focused on inpatient records (67.6%). Case-finding algorithms (56.7%) were more frequently validated than diagnoses codes alone (37.8%). Five conditions were validated in more than one study: diabetes mellitus, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, rotavirus infection, and tuberculosis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This scoping review identified a number of gaps in the validation of administrative health data for pediatric populations, including limited investigation of outpatient populations and older pediatric age groups.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, 103 Hospital Drive, SK S7N 0W8, Saskatoon, Canada. natalie.shiff@usask.ca.
authors.forename: Natalie J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Shiff
authors.forename: Sadia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jama
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Boden
authors.forename: Lisa M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Lix
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records / Q000592:standards*; D010372:Pediatrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D055815:Young Adult