CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 155Indigenous Health, Education, and RightsSurvey Methodology and NonresponseIndigenous Cultures and History

Back to the basics: Identifying and addressing underlying challenges in achieving high quality and relevant health statistics for indigenous populations in Canada

Open access
Smylie, Janet, Firestone, Michelle·2015·Statistical Journal of the IAOS
DOI 10.3233/sji-150864PMC PMC4716822
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Canada is known internationally for excellence in both the quality and public policy relevance of its health and social statistics. There is a double standard however with respect to the relevance and quality of statistics for Indigenous populations in Canada. Indigenous specific health and social statistics gathering is informed by unique ethical, rights-based, policy and practice imperatives regarding the need for Indigenous participation and leadership in Indigenous data processes throughout the spectrum of indicator development, data collection, management, analysis and use. We demonstrate how current Indigenous data quality challenges including misclassification errors and non-response bias systematically contribute to a significant underestimate of inequities in health determinants, health status, and health care access between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. The major quality challenge underlying these errors and biases is the lack of Indigenous specific identifiers that are consistent and relevant in major health and social data sources. The recent removal of an Indigenous identity question from the Canadian census has resulted in further deterioration of an already suboptimal system. A revision of core health data sources to include relevant, consistent, and inclusive Indigenous self-identification is urgently required. These changes need to be carried out in partnership with Indigenous peoples and their representative and governing organizations.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3233/sji-150864

Cites

45 of 45 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Our Health Counts is a research initiative created by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis researchers and health service providers living in urban and related homelands, which meets community standards with the intention of addressing the near absence of population-based health assessment information for these populations.

    “An additional significant example of Canadian Indigenous community-based epidemiology research is Our Health Counts, a research initiative created by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis researchers and health service providers living in urban and related homelands, which meets community standards with the intention of addressing the near absence of population-based health assessment information for”

    From Addressing the need for indigenous and decolonized quantitative research methods in Canada (2021) · cites this paper as Smylie & Firestone, 2015

    Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 47 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. J. Smylie, Indigenous Child Well-Being in Canada, in Ency- clopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being, A. C. Michalos, Ed. Toronto, ON: Springer, 2014.
  2. National Conference of State Legislatures, Health Cost Con- tainment and Efficiencies: Public Health and Cost Savings, Washington D.C., 2011.
  3. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), Part One: The Relationship in Historical Perspective, vol. 1, no. Looking Forward Looking Back, 1996, pp. 36-46.
  4. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), Stage Three: Displacement and Assimilation, vol. 1, no. Looking Forward Looking Back, 1996, pp. 130-185.
  5. Statistics Canada, Chapter 6 -Data dissemination for NHS standard products, Government of Canada, 2011. [On- line]. Available: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/ ref/nhs-enm_guide/guide_5-eng.cfm.
  6. J. Smylie, S. Crengle, J. Freenantle and M. Taualii, Indige- nous Birth Outcomes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, Open J Womens' Heal 4 (2010), 7-17.
  7. M. Green, Reporting infant mortality rates for Aboriginal populations in Canada: A jurisdictional review of method- ologies, 2007.
  8. Statistics New Zealand, Report of the Review of the Mea- surement of Ethnicity June 2004, 2004.
  9. Z. Luo, R. Wilkins, M. Heaman, P. Martens, L. Hart, S. Was- simi, F. Simonet, Y. Wu and D. Fraser, William, Neighbor- hood Socioeconomic Characteristics, Birth Outcomes and Infant Mortality among First Nations and Non-First Nations in Manitoba, Canada, Open Womens Heal J 4 (2010), 55-61.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Smylie, J., & Firestone, M.
Affiliations
St. Michael's Hospital (CA)
Corresponding author
Smylie, Janet
ORCID
Venue
Statistical Journal of the IAOS
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2015
Volume
31
Issue
1
Pages
67-87
ISSN
1874-7655 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.3233/sji-150864
PMC
PMC4716822
OpenAlex
W1446504491
Cited by
155
References
47
Citations by year
2026: 14 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1
FWCI
9.52
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Statistical Journal of the IAOS (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • Public Health Agency of Canada
  • Public Health Agency
  • U.S. Public Health Service (137902-1)
  • Canadian Institutes of Health Research (137902_1)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Health › Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Indigenous Cultures and History
Keywords
Indigenous data sovereignty, indigenous self-identification, misclassification, nonresponse bias, health disparities, census, health data quality, health data sources, Canada

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review