Aggregate data
They are used to evaluate policies, recognise trends and patterns of processes, gain relevant insights, and assess current measures for strategic planning.
Aggregate data is widely used, but it also has some limitations, including drawing inaccurate inferences and false conclusions which is also termed ‘ecological fallacy’.
[2] Researchers have also made an effort to evaluate policies, practices and precepts of systems critically with the assistance of aggregate data, to investigate the corresponding relevance and efficacy.
Aggregate mobile location data could provide insights about the effectiveness of social distancing measures launched by governments.
[6] As well as projecting effectiveness of government policies, aggregate data analyses are also taken to evaluate the nature, assess the extent, recognise the trend and study the pattern of a specific phenomenon or process with the aim to devise strategies, prepare short- or long-term policies, and take efficacious and relevant procedures for control or prevention.
The main reason for banks to use aggregate data is to estimate economic trends and gain insights on customer clusters.
[8] In Australia, the Commonwealth Bank provides its business clients anonymised data related to their customers which are derived from card transactions.
[5] Aggregate data can be a composition of various types of writings and records, including biography, autobiography, descriptive accounts and correspondence.
Official or non-official agencies also collect and compile aggregate data on an ongoing basis through utilising infrastructures available within a department at the field level.
[12] In political activity analyses, significant data such as those related to industrialisation, urbanization, as well as mass communication networks, are not expressed readily in individual levels.
This facilitates researchers and analysts in carrying out longer trend studies and allows them to bring changes and developments in a deeper focus.
The aggregated patient data are utilised by users including the Cochrane Collaboration, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, and multiple professional societies in providing support for clinical practice guidelines.
Researchers are able to have access towards the discoveries of international colleagues and forges collaborations to facilitate processes involved in fighting against the disease.
[16] During the process of averaging units within some cluster or within a country, information is lost which increases the probability of drawing inaccurate inferences.
[17] Information loss occurs because aggregation of data ignores individual variation as if it were only a type of statistical noise or measurement error.
The amount of funds borrowed by businesses for purposes including project investments, assets purchases, or cash flow managements are also measured using credit aggregates.
[7] Monetary aggregates are measurements of the money or ‘money-like’ instruments of the banking system, which is owed to businesses and households.
They are a compilation of aggregated, or summarised, calculations of the number of individuals, household residents, or families in particular geographic areas with specific characteristics, or compounds of characteristics, taken from the subjects of people and places, populations, families, health, ethnicity and religion, housing and work.
