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QUALITY DECLARATION - SUMMARY

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 ABS Institutional Environment.


RELEVANCE

In October the ABS conducted a Queensland (QLD) state specific survey as part of the Monthly Population Survey (MPS) program. Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland was the October 2010 State Supplementary Survey topic for Queensland.

The publication provides information to allow analysis of how employed people used their flexible working arrangements to manage their caring and volunteering responsibilities. Information was collected about flexible working arrangements, work preferences, volunteering and caring in relationship to a range of demographic information. More detailed information, to allow more in-depth exploration of the survey data, is available in the associated data cubes that were released at the same time as this publication.

The scope of this survey was restricted to people aged 15 years and over who were usual residents of private dwellings. This supplementary survey comprised a series of additional questions asked at the end of each Labour Force Survey interview. The interviews were conducted over a two week period during October 2010. Most interviews were conducted by telephone, with the remainder conducted face-to-face.


TIMELINESS

The Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland survey was conducted as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey throughout Queensland during the two weeks commencing 10 October 2010.

Information collected in this survey reflects activity in the 12 months prior to October 2010.


ACCURACY

Information for the Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland survey was sought from 3612 households in private dwellings. Of these households, 92.9% fully responded to the survey.

Two types of error can occur in estimates that are based on a sample survey: non-sampling error and sampling error. Relative standard errors (RSEs) are a measure of sampling error and every data cell has an RSE associated with it. Where there are high RSEs associated with data cells, they will be indicated by comments in the data cubes. For further information please refer to the Glossary, Explanatory Notes, or Technical Note.


COHERENCE

The Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland survey is not part of the ongoing ABS Monthly Population Survey program. Extreme caution must be used when comparing the results of this October 2010 survey with other related publications as different methodologies have been used. The data collected for this survey was for the 12 months prior to October 2010.

The ABS has been conducting surveys related to the topic of Flexible Working Arrangements on an irregular basis. Previous ABS surveys related to Flexible Working Arrangements used a variety of sampling methods, estimation methods, concepts, data item definitions and classifications.

The overall volunteering rate in this survey varies from the rates observed for Queensland in the 2006 Census of Population and Housing and the estimates for volunteering in the General Social Survey, Australia, 2006 (cat. no. 4159.0), where different methodologies were used. For further information about the methodological differences please refer to the introduction given in the Volunteering chapter of the Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland, October 2010 publication.

INTERPRETABILITY

Information on terminology and other technical aspects associated with statistics from this 2010 State Supplementary Survey are available. These can be found in the web based publication Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland (cat. no. 6342.0.80.002), which contains a detailed Glossary, Explanatory Notes and Technical Note.


ACCESSIBILITY

Data from this State Supplementary Survey, Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland, October 2010 are available in a variety of formats. The formats available free of charge on the ABS website are:

• main features, which include commentary, graphs and a table
• data cubes which present a variety of data items across Flexible Working Arrangements, Work Preferences, Child Caring, Adult Caring and Volunteering.