The rules applied by casualty recorders to decide on status include the use of ranges, taking the majority view, prioritising the view of certain sources, or having a discussion within the team or organisation.
- The use of ranges. For incident-based casualty recording, where there were variations in reported numbers of civilians and numbers of combatants killed in an incident, some recorders use a range in their published figures to express the maximum and minimum reported killed of each status.
- Taking the view expressed by the majority of sources. Where conflicting opinions on status are expressed by sources, some recorders use the opinion expressed by the greatest number of sources.
- Prioritising the view of certain types of sources. Some recorders use a hierarchy of sources. Some assume local media sources are more reliable than international media sources, or vice versa. Others take court or inquest decisions as the most authoritative source.
- Discussion within the recorder’s organisation. Many recorders have a practice of taking difficult cases to team discussion in order to get different perspectives and collectively decide how to record a casualty.
DEFINITION AND CATEGORISATION IN CASUALTY RECORDING, p. 25
