This chapter addresses issues of data quality that affect the interpretation of
reported mortality levels and trends in the New Independent States (NIS). It
presents an overview of data quality issues for readers who are not necessarily
specialists in demography or familiar with the quality and types of data that are
available from this part of the world. We examine data from selected regions and
dates, while drawing the reader’s attention to broader issues and the existing
literature on the quality of data from the former Soviet Union. Our focus is on the
traditionally Moslem NIS countries, including the Central Asian states of Kyrgyz,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, plus Kazakstan and Azerbaijan, which
are linked both historically and culturally to Central Asia; these are cases in
which real levels and trends in mortality, both past and present, are obscured by
data error. Russia and Latvia are cases in which the reported adult mortality
patterns and evidence of increasing mortality can be believed, and they are therefore
used as a frame of reference for the reliability of the Central Asian data;
these cases are fairly typical of the European part of the NIS. To aid in the
analysis, we also draw on some detailed data from Xinjiang (in China), where one
finds major ethnic groups that are culturally similar to Turkic groups in the
Central Asian states. The purpose of the analysis is to identify ways of improving
data collection in the NIS, especially Central Asia, so that policies and interventions
related to health and mortality can be more effectively developed and targeted