dhis2-kenya team mailing list archive

[Nancy Amayo <amayonancy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lars we had started working on this but I think there was a feeling that we needed hard copies of the tools which we didn't have in the workshop since some current data elements names may not be exactly the same as the form names, we therefore stopped since we did not want to mess up the database. However I think we should continue once we get the hard copies.

Regards
 
Nancy Amayo
Division of Health Information System





________________________________
 From: Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>
To: dhis2-kenya@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Sunday, November 4, 2012 9:29 AM
Subject: [Dhis2-kenya] Naming of indicators and data elements
 



Dear all,

let me emphasize one point that I have mentioned so many times now regarding naming of data elements and indicators.

Please do NOT start indicator names with "% of" or "Total". Do not start data element names with "Total of ". We have many hundreds of these names now.

It becomes impossible to sort and find them this way when working with the system. "Number of" is implicit in an aggregate system. The indicator type, for instance %, can be found from the indicator type.

The most significant part of the name should come first. So instead of calling an indicator

"% of Total Female tested for HIV (PTB-)"

which is impossible to find in a sorted list, you call it

"HIV (PTB-) Tested Female"

Instead of calling a data element

"Number of TB Patients with BMI <18.5"

you just call it

"TB Patients with BMI <18.5"


Also, there was a group working on giving data elements meaningful names in the workshop last week. We still have hundreds of pointless names like:

1. New (N)
1. Type of resistance
2210302 Accommodation

The idea is that we put the name specific to the form in the "form name" attribute of the data element. This name will then appear on section forms. Then we give a meaningful name to the data element so that we can understand what it means and so that it can be used in reports. I will try to fix some of it using scripts. Can we work on improving this? 


regards,

Lars
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