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U.S. Department of Transportation U.S. Department of Transportation Icon United States Department of Transportation United States Department of Transportation
FHWA Highway Safety Programs

Performance Measures

Performance measures are fundamental in helping Federal, State, and local agencies to assess the quality of their data systems.  As States expand their roadway data inventories by collecting the FDE/HSIP, they should review their current performance measures (if any exist) and implement additional performance measures to achieve quality data.  This should be considered not just for roadway data but for all traffic data systems.  NHTSA has identified 61 model performance measures to assess the core State traffic records data systems.  The performance measures assess the quality characteristics of timeliness, accuracy, completeness, uniformity, integration, and accessibility.

  • Timeliness reflects the span of time between the occurrence of an event and entry of information into the appropriate database.
  • Accuracy is the degree to which the data are error-free, satisfy internal consistency checks, and do not exist in duplicate within a single database.
  • Completeness reflects the number of records that are missing from the database.
  • Uniformity reflects the consistency among the files and records in a database.
  • Integration is the ability of records in a database to be linked to a set of records in another database.
  • Accessibility reflects the ability of users to successfully obtain desired data (14).

These attributes are based on the core characteristics of data systems and are intended to help monitor and improve the quality of data in an agency’s traffic record systems.  The NHTSA Report entitled Model Performance Measures for State Traffic Records Systems (14) documents specific performance measures for each of the core traffic safety data systems—crash, vehicle, driver, roadway, citation/adjudication, and EMS/injury surveillance.  It discusses the key features of the model performance measures and the performance measure criteria.  Details are included on how each of the six performance attributes (timeliness, accuracy, completeness, uniformity, integration, and accessibility) are measured for the different data systems.  Additional information can be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811441.pdf.