Since the estimates from surveys are based on information obtained from a sub-sample of usual residents of a sample of dwellings, they are subject to sampling variability. As such, they may differ from those that would have been produced if all usual residents of all dwellings had been included in the survey. One measure of the likely difference is given by the standard error (SE), which indicates the extent to which an estimate might have varied by chance because only a sample of dwellings was included. RSE is a measure of the likely difference and is obtained by expressing the SE as a percentage of the estimate.
Survey TableBuilder also has a rule which determines if a table is deemed unreliable based on the proportion of cells with RSE values above a specified cut-off value exceed a threshold. Whenever a table is generated from Survey TableBuilder that is of poor quality, the following message will appear - 'The table has a large number of unreliable estimates and should be used with caution'.
Furthermore, RSE values above a given threshold are suppressed from being displayed in the Survey TableBuilder. Instead, Survey TableBuilder will display ‘np’ to indicate that the RSE value had been suppressed.
More information regarding RSE can be found on the Microdata web pages.
This page last updated 5 December 2012
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