Indicator 17.18.1 Statistical capacity indicator for Sustainable Development Goal monitoring

Proportion of sustainable development indicators produced at the national level with full disaggregation when relevant to the target, in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics

There is currently no clear UN guidance on the methodology for this indicator, so the Sustainable Development Goals team within the Office for National Statistics is publishing these numbers based on in-house research. Once a clear direction is given by the UN and the formal metadata is established, this indicator will be updated accordingly.

UK

Percentage

The reported numbers for this indicator are based on counting the minimum disaggregations which are mentioned specifically in the indicator name. Based on this principle, a relevant disaggregation is most often defined as any classification that follows “by” in the title of the indicator, for example “by age and sex”. This working definition excludes cases where the title of the indicator includes sub-indicators, such as Indicator 3.5.1 - “Coverage of treatment interventions (pharmacological, psychosocial and rehabilitation and aftercare services) for substance use disorders” – treatment intervention is a sub-indicator rather than a disaggregation. Also, excluded are any references to the sample the indicator requires data for, such as Indicator 5.3.1 - “Proportion of women aged 20-24 years who were married or in a union before age 15 and before age 18” – sex and age are not disaggregations, but the sample required by the indicator.

Based on the definition above, across all goals 53 indicators were identified as containing specific disaggregations within the title. This number was used as the denominator for calculating the proportion of indicators with full disaggregation. The number of reported indicators on the UK SDG platform that fully achieve the disaggregation identified in their title are divided by the total number of indicators identified to contain disaggregation in their title (that is, 53). This number is then multiplied by 100 to obtain the percentage of indicators with full disaggregation across all goals. The same process is followed for indicators that have available data only for some of the disaggregations identified in the title, in order to obtain percentage of indicators with achieved partial disaggregation.

Likewise for indicators that require disaggregation in the title, but no data is available on the platform. In addition, a proxy variable counts towards achieving a required disaggregation. For example indicator 2.2.2 requires prevalence of malnutrition by type (wasting and overweight), which is achieved by using a classification by Body Mass Index (BMI) - obese, overweight, and underweight. When the data is additionally disaggregated by goal, the percentage represents the completeness of disaggregation (fully, partially, not disaggregated) based on the number of indicators identified to require disaggregation within that particular goal, rather than the total 53 indicators across all goals.

Based on the outlined definition, Goals 6, 7 ,13, and 14 do not have any indicators that require disaggregation.

The data reported here represent a snapshot from a particular year. For the current reporting status, refer to the ‘Disaggregation status’ tab of the reporting status section within the National Reporting Platform. Note that the reported percentages there are calculated out of the total 247 indicators, rather than the 53 indicators that explicitly require disaggregation in the title. Therefore, the methodology is slightly different and although the reported counts are the same, the percentage will differ. Within this methodology, indicators that do not require disaggregation in the title are classed as “out of scope”. This indicator is being used as an approximation of the UN SDG Indicator. Where possible, we will work to identify or develop UK data to meet the global indicator specification. This indicator has been identified in collaboration with topic experts.