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II. Data Element Standards - Foster Care

The DQU checks each element to ensure that it meets certain minimum standards. These standards are based on Children's Bureau policy. The standards used by the DQU are somewhat stricter than those used by the Data Compliance Utility.

Table 1, below, indicates the standards by which the DQU measures each of the 66 foster care data elements including the expanded six character race elements. There are five columns in the table:

Data Element - The element number and name.

Element Type/Size - The type of element with the size (i.e., number of characters) in parentheses.

Each element has one of three types.

Missing Data Standard - Indicates whether or not nulls are permitted in this field. If nulls are permitted, this element will never be marked as missing by the DQU.

Allowable Values - For all elements (except element #4, record number) only numeric characters are allowed unless the data is filled with blanks.

For code elements the specific values that are allowed and their corresponding meaning are given. For uncoded and date elements, the allowable range is given. All dates must also be valid dates (e.g., the month must be between 01 - 12 and the day must be not exceed the number of days in the month).

Also, all uncoded elements must be right-justified and padded with zeros. Each of the four components of the date element (the century, the year, the month, and the day) must also be right-justified and padded with zeros (e.g., the date March 3, 1901 should appear this way: 19010301). If the element contains a value that is not included in this column, the element will be marked as out of range by the DQU.

Inconsistency Check Group Involvement - The group number of every consistency check in which the element is involved. For more information on the consistency check groups, see section IV.

Table 1. Data Element Standards - Foster Care