Data Insight: Assessing the reliability and validity of the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 2017

Small-area deprivation measures help identify the most deprived areas, supporting decisions about where resources are most needed and informing efforts to reduce health inequalities. The Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (NIMDM) 2017 is Northern Ireland’s official measure of area-level deprivation and measures deprivation across seven domains: Income, Employment, Health & Disability, Education, Skills & Training, Access to Services, Living Environment and Crime & Disorder. This Data Insight explores the research utility of the NIMDM 2017. 

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Given that the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (NIMDM) 2017 is widely used by administrative data researchers, we wanted to investigate whether the measure and its seven domains accurately reflect what they were designed to measure, and whether the measure is associated with health outcomes in the ways one would expect. Accessing NIMDM 2017 domain-indicator data via the NI Neighbourhood Information Service, and linking NIMDM data to hospital admissions data, we conducted our analyses in two-phases. 

Phase 1 revealed that indicators within some domains were weakly associated and, therefore, did not seem to be measuring the same construct