Technical Bulletin 9b

I. Introduction

This is the technical documentation for the AFCARS Data Quality Utility (DQU). It is a companion to AFCARS Technical Bulletin (TB) #9a, which is a users manual for the DQU. This documentation is intended to give a more technical description of how the Data Quality Utility works. It includes:

Data Element Standards for the 66 foster care and the 37 adoption data elements, including the expanded six character race elements;
Descriptions of cross-file checks for all 66 foster care and all 37 adoption data elements including the expanded six character race elements;
Descriptions of how each of the 13 foster care and 7 adoption consistency check groups are evaluated;
A diagram of the system processing logic.

There will be no discussion in this document of the reports created by the DQU or how to interpret them. That topic is covered in TB #9a.

This document describes the functions of the State Data Quality Utility. The Federal AFCAR system also runs a version of the DQU on all submitted AFCARS files. The only functional difference between the State version and the Federal version of the utility is that the Federal version also contains programs to delete or "clean" certain incorrect data from a State file prior to loading it into the Federal AFCARS database. The State version of the utility will, however, indicate which elements would be deleted if the State file were to be submitted to the Federal AFCARS. Refer to Figure 1. for a view of the flow of data through the Data Quality Utility. Those items that have dashed outlines are only part of the Federal system and not the State DQU. There will be no description in this document of any processing not performed by the State Data Quality Utility.

Please note: the DQU will only work on a properly formatted AFCARS file. For instructions on the formatting specification, please refer to AFCARS Technical Bulletin #2: File Format, which is available on the Children's Bureau's web page at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#afcars/afcars.

Figure 1. AFCARS Data Flow Diagram

AFCARS Data Flow Diagram