NIOSH Industry and Occupation Computerized Coding System (NIOCCS)

NIOCCS is a web-based software tool designed to convert industry and occupation text into standardized industry and occupation codes.

Industry and occupation text are often collected in surveys, case report forms, and death certificates. These descriptions must be translated into standardized codes so that public health professionals can analyze the data and identify whether illnesses or injuries are occurring more frequently among certain types of jobs or businesses.

NIOCCS was created to reduce the high cost of manually coding industry and occupation information while simultaneously improving uniformity of the codes.

NIOCCS can be used by anyone, but mostly benefits:

• occupational researchers
• federal government agencies
• state health departments
• organizations that collect and/or evaluate information using industry and occupation

How to use NIOCCS

1. Open NIOCCS If you have a large number of records to code, you’ll need to register for a NIOCCS account. If you have only a few records, you can enter them to get the standard code without having to register for an account.
2. Provide the industry and occupation text you need coded. If you have only a few records, you can enter these without uploading a file. If you have a lot of records, it’s fastest to upload the information in a file format. Files uploaded into NIOCCS must be in a standard .txt file format delimited by a Tab or Pipe character (|) and must contain at least:
   • Record identifier (ID)
   • Industry text
   • Occupation text

   Each record submitted must have a value in the ID field and must have at least one value in either the Industry Title or Occupation Title – an example of what the file could look like is shown here:

   

3. Code the data. NIOCCS automatically codes most of the records but data in some records cannot be coded. In this case, codes are assigned by a person, especially if there are problems with the data like misspellings or incomplete descriptions. NIOCCS provides computer-assisted coding features to help you to select appropriate codes for those records not automatically coded.
4. Download your results. Once the coding process is complete, you can view the output of a single code, or download the coded file, which includes the original uploaded data or input data fields, plus standardized Census, NAICS, and SOC industry and occupation codes.