I can't find details about "aggregation type" in "editing data element" in DHIS2.
What is its purpose and what should the value inside be?
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2 Answers
The aggregation type defines how the data for a data element is aggregated in analytics, meaning in the pivot table, visualizer and maps apps. As an example, if you set the aggregation type to "Sum" for a data element, when using that data element as part of a pivot table, the data values for that data element will be summarized and presented as an aggregated value. The "sum" type is the most common. Make sure to chose the type which best fits your data element and the data you are aggregating.
It depends on what you're measuring; the other approach you can take is to consider what it is you're trying to assess. Most often DHIS2 is used to input counts of people visiting clinic A in a month with a particular condition (or accessing a specific health service, depending on your HMIS data sets). The analytics generated from this input data requires an operator in order to construct a meaningful result for use in analysis phase. You also need to understand the hierarchical nature of its data model: facilities > county > district > state > country.
It's designed to aggregate data upwards from lowest reporting level (usually facility) up to a national level. If you were interested in counting the number of facilities reporting data for a specific element you would use COUNT. If you're interested in summing together the values captured across all facilities in your country - you use SUM. Obviously there are other operators designed with specific cases in mind...
