Standards
Quality Data Standards
Quality Data gives communities a comprehensive and dynamic view of the system, enabling them to work more effectively towards addressing homelessness by targeting improvement projects, testing changes, and understanding whether their efforts are making measurable progress toward reducing homelessness.
Built for Zero recognizes two tiers of Quality Data: Initial and Advanced. Meeting the Initial Quality Data standard signifies that the community’s data system is comprehensive, accurate, reliable, and person-centered for the populations they are focusing on. It is the cornerstone of confidence in the data’s validity and reliability and demonstrates that the community can use their data to inform strategic decisions and track progress across the system.
These two tiers of Quality Data are laid out in detail on the Population-Level Quality Data Scorecard Rubric.
There are three requirements used to assess whether a community has met the Quality Data standards for a target population: population-level scorecards, monthly metric reporting, and low margin of error.
- Meeting Initial Quality Data Threshold: The community must meet the Initial Quality Data thresholds on all questions in the applicable population-specific scorecard. Scorecards are a qualitative measure for assessing a community’s ability to build and maintain a comprehensive by-name dataset for a specific population. They cover the essential elements needed to keep a by-name dataset accurate, comprehensive, reliable, and person-centered.
- Consistent Reporting: The community must consistently report data for a minimum of six out of the seven BFZ metrics. This must be done for four consecutive months, including the current month, for each population or subpopulation being considered for Quality Data. Monthly reporting is a quantitative measure that demonstrate a community can apply the practices named in the scorecard, and that their data accurately reflects how people experiencing homelessness move through the system. The six required metrics are:
- Actively Homeless Number
- Inflow – Newly Identified
- Inflow – Returned from Housed
- Inflow – Returned from Inactive
- Outflow – Housing Placement
- Outflow – Moved to Inactive
*Communities are encouraged to report the “No Longer Meets Population Criteria” metric, but it is not required to meet Initial Quality Data.
Learn more about tracking the BFZ metrics in the Tracking List Statuses section of the toolkit.
- Low Margin of Error: The three-month data reliability percentage for each population or subpopulation must be less than 15%. This ensures a lower margin of error and a higher level of data accuracy.
While meeting the Initial Threshold is required to achieve a Quality Data milestone, the Advanced Threshold reflects high confidence in the long-term accuracy, reliability, sustainability, and fairness of system outcomes. It indicates a resilient system that maintains data accuracy even as the environment changes.
Communities may pursue Quality Data for the Single Adult, Youth, and Family populations in any sequence. However, the Initial Quality Data Threshold for Veteran and Chronic subpopulations must be met at the same time as, or before, Single Adult Quality Data can be achieved. More information about each population and subpopulation can be found in the Reporting Reference Guide.
What is data reliability, and how is it calculated?
Data reliability is a measure used by Built for Zero to determine the margin of error within community-submitted data. Calculating the margin of error helps to determine how far off the ACTUAL number of people reported as actively experiencing homelessness is from the EXPECTED number of people reported as actively experiencing homelessness. Data reliability is calculated each month (one-month data reliability) and across the previous three months (three-month data reliability) to determine if a community’s data is balanced over time. A data reliability of 0% indicates that your data is balanced perfectly!
