• DETECTION OF ERRORS IN AGE DATA OF NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME REGISTRANTS IN GHANA: DEMOGRAPHIC INDEXES APPROACH.

Abstract

The most significant errors found in demographic data have been widely known to occur in age reporting. This study sought to assess the precision of age reporting by registrants of National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) of the Sekondi District of Ghana for the month of June, 2018 by employing demographic indexes. Myer’s index found about 16% of male and 24% of female registrants to have respectively misreported their ages with wrong terminal digit. For both female and male ages reported, there was a terminal digit preference for 0 and 5 with percentages of about 14% and 17% respectively for females and about 16% and 20% respectively for male registrants. The most avoided terminal digit for male and female registrants were 3 and 2 respectively. Additionally, the UN Joint score with an index of 138.14 qualified the data as highly inaccurate. By comparing the absolute sum of deviations from 100 of both male and female ages, it was evident that there were more inaccuracies in the age data of females than males. Again, the Whipple’s index qualified the data as approximate and rough for terminal digit of 5 for male and female ages respectively. However, Whipple’s index qualified the data as highly accurate for both male and female registrants with terminal digit of 0. The greatest fluctuation for both male and female age ratios occurred at higher age intervals of 45-49 and 60-64years; an indication of large differences of populations in adjacent groups. Mandatory birth registration was recommended to be enforced in Ghana.