I am one of those people that responded to Andy Youell without having seen
the changes in the HESA reference document, 'Students in Higher Education'.
I agree with Judy that the changes will make it impossible to carry out any
accurate analysis eg.'Time Series Analysis', etc. In addition, as the
person with responsibility for both Management Information and Data
Protection here at Southampton Institute, I cannot see how the original
methodology would affect individuals. Perhaps Andy can enlighten us.
Judy Evans <[log in to unmask]>@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on 26/04/2001 16:54:59
Please respond to "This list is for the benefit of those working in
academic, financial or spa"
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: "This list is for the benefit of those working in academic,
financial or spa" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
cc: (bcc: Zita Eckett/Registry/Southampton Institute)
Subject: National Statistics Quality Review of HE (student) statistics
Colleagues who are responding to this recent survey request from
Andy Youell at HESA may be interested to see the comment we
included in response to question 7. You may not have yet become
aware of this new 'feature' of the HESA Reference volume:
"We have recently received the HESA Students in Higher Education
Institutions volume for 1999/2000. It is with some concern that
we note the changes to the presentation of the data contained in
the tables, ie the suppression of numbers between one and nine
and the rounding of all other numbers to the nearest ten.
The changes to the tabulations are a consequence of the
provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights
Act 1998. We can understand the need for the suppression of
small numbers in the institution tables but we fail to see the
logic of this application to the UK-wide tables. We also do not
see how rounding of numbers to ten contributes to the prevention
of the disclosure of personal information about any individual.
The HESA volumes are a valuable tool for individual institutions
both for monitoring their own student profiles and those of other
institutions. Presenting the data in the new format no longer
makes this possible."
----------------------
Judy Evans
Head of Management Information
University of North London
166-220 Holloway Road
London N7 8DB
tel : 020 7753 5146
fax : 020 7753 5120
email : [log in to unmask]
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