Interpreting the data

Introduction
Background
Health Warning
Select your groups
Interpreting the data

Viewing data ...
... as HPI chart
... as bar chart
... as table
... as Excel file

All data shown in the Health Poverty Index has been scaled so that a score of zero indicates the best situation in terms of health poverty and a score of one indicates the worst situation. In other words, an area with a score near zero for a particular indicator has lower levels of health poverty in that domain than an area with a score near one.

The data is available in two formats, scaled and ranked. In both formats a score of zero indicates the best situation in terms of health poverty and a score of one indicates the worst situation. The scaled data for each indicator shows the linearly scaled indicator - the Local Authority score showing the highest level of health poverty across England for that indicator is given a score of one, while the Local Authority score showing the lowest level of health poverty across England for that indicator is given a score of zero. The ranked data for each indicator shows the linearly scaled ranked indicator - all Local Authorities are ranked on that indicator, and the ranks scaled so that the the Local Authority score showing the highest level of health poverty across England for that indicator is given a score of one, while the Local Authority score showing the lowest level of health poverty across England for that indicator is given a score of zero.

For example, in the HPI Chart shown below for the default group settings, Oxford district (the red line) is compared with England (the blue line) for scaled data. As you can see, the areas are similar for many of the indicators, however Oxford has significantly higher levels of health poverty for the Social Capital indicator than the average across England (the Oxford district red line for the Social Capital indicator in the top-right corner is nearer to one than the England average blue line)