Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 396308 |
Registration status: | Community Services (retired), Superseded 04/04/2011 |
Data quality | |
Institutional environment: | For information on the institutional environment of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), including the legislative obligations of the ABS, financing and governance arrangements, and mechanisms for scrutiny of ABS operations, please see the ABS Institutional Environment. |
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Timeliness: | The Census and Statistics Act 1905 requires the Australian Statistician to conduct a Census on a regular basis. Since 1961 it has been conducted every 5 years. The 2006 Census was the 15th national Census for Australia and was held on 8 August 2006. For the 2006 Census, first release data was available on the ABS website on 27 June 2007, and second release data on 25 October 2007. |
Accessibility: | An extensive range of 2006 Census data is freely available from the ABS website and accessible from publications or electronic products. See Census Products for the full range. For complex and specialised requests that cannot be sourced freely online, the ABS Information Consultancy Service can provide data on a fee for service basis. |
Interpretability: | To aid interpretation of Census data, a comprehensive range of reference and information is available on the ABS website, including the Census Dictionary, data quality statements and Census fact sheets. See Census Reference and Information for more details. |
Relevance: | The Census collects information on the labour force status of all persons aged 15 years and over and identifies whether they are employed working full time, part time or away from work, unemployed looking for full time or part time work, or not in the labour force. Labour force status refers to the week prior to the Census. The Indigenous labour force participation and employment figures from the 2006 Census consider people participating in the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme as employed. The CDEP scheme enables members of Indigenous communities to exchange unemployment benefits for opportunities to undertake paid work and training in activities managed by a local Indigenous community organisation. |
Accuracy: | There are four principal sources of error in Census data: respondent error, processing error, partial response and undercount. Results from the post-enumeration survey reveal an undercount of the Indigenous population. This undercount may introduce bias into the results which may affect comparability of estimates among jurisdictions. The net undercount for all Indigenous Australians was estimated at 11.5 per cent, calculated as the difference between the Census count of Indigenous people and the estimated Indigenous population on Census night (note that people who were counted in the Census but whose Indigenous status was not stated are included in estimates of net undercount). Estimates of the Indigenous net undercount for all jurisdictions are included below: Estimated Indigenous net undercount by state/territory Undercount rate % NSW 8.6 Vic. 9.4 Qld 11.6 SA 8.6 WA 16.6 Tas. 8.8 NT 16.0 ACT 8.8 Australia 11.5 Source: ABS 2008 (Cat no. 3238.0.55.001). Quality statements for Labour Force and Indigenous Census data are available, see particularly: Labour Force Status and Indigenous Status. |
Coherence: | It is important that data for any given Census is comparable with previous Censuses and also with other data produced by the ABS and wider community. In the Census and other household surveys, the ABS uses Australian standard classifications where appropriate to provide data that are comparable across statistical collections. These include standards for labour force status, and geographic areas, for example. For more details see About Census Classifications. Coherence between the Labour Force Survey and Census is available in Labour Force Status. Labour force estimates by Indigenous status from the Census have some methodological and definitional differences from other sources such as the Labour Force Survey. These differences may affect the comparability of data from different collections. Explanatory notes in Labour Force Characteristics of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, Estimates from the Labour Force Survey, 2007, outline differences among Census, Labour Force Survey and other survey estimates. |
Relational attributes | |
Related metadata references: | Has been superseded by National Indigenous Reform Agreement: PI 14a-Level of workforce participation (Census data), 2013 QS Indigenous, Superseded 25/06/2014 |
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: |