Road accident data collection form design research project

STATS19 is a standard set of data that are collected by the police following personal injury accidents on the public road. The data are collated by local authorities, Transport Scotland and the Department for Transport and are used nationally to monitor trends, inform policy and to identify areas for action.

There is no national data collection form; the protocol simply describes what data should be collected and how it should be submitted. In 2013 eight legacy police forces in Scotland merged and formed Police Scotland, and therefore there are likely to be differences to the data collection across the force.

The aim of this project was to review the currently used versions of the STATS19 form by the legacy police forces in Scotland and produce a new form that incorporates recommendations for improvement that could be potentially rolled out nationally to help improve the quality of the personal injury road accident data collected in Scotland.

The content of the STATS19 data is reviewed every five years as part of the quinquennial review across Great Britain, meaning that variables and the information collected could not be considered as part of this work. Therefore, this project focussed on the design of the form and any changes that could be made to improve the completeness and accuracy of the data collected in Scotland.