Quality of the notifications of interpersonal and self-inflicted violence in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009-2016

Abstract Background Data from Health Information Systems are widely used for the production of knowledge. For their effective use, however, it is essential to ensure that they are valid and reliable. Objective Evaluate the quality of reports of violence in the state of Rio de Janeiro aiming to contribute to the improvement of information. Method Ecological study on the consistency of notifications of violence recorded to the Information System on Diseases of Compulsory Declaration in the state of Rio de Janeiro from 2009 to 2016. The temporal trend of the proportions of inconsistencies, for each group of related fields, was evaluated by simple linear regression and its statistical significance ( p≤0.05). Results During the study period, 103,841 cases of violence were reported, but in 31.7% of them it was not possible to identify whether they were interpersonal or self-inflicted. The main inconsistencies were incongruence between psychological violence and aggression, gender identity and sex, type of violence and age of the victim, self-inflicted violence and characteristics of the aggressor and type of violence; most of them presented stability in the period ( p>0.05). Conclusion The results show significant inconsistencies in the reports of violence that compromise the use of this information.