USING TABLEBUILDER

For general information relating to TableBuilder and instructions on how to use the features of the TableBuilder product please refer to the User Manual: TableBuilder (cat. no. 1406.0.55.005).

More specific information applicable to the 2013 National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection TableBuilder product, which should enable users to understand, interpret and tabulate the data, is outlined below.

CONFIDENTIALITY FEATURES IN TABLEBUILDER

In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, all the data in TableBuilder are subjected to a confidentiality process before release. This confidentiality process is undertaken to avoid releasing information that may allow the identification of particular individuals, families, households, dwellings or businesses.

Processes used in TableBuilder to confidentialise records include the following:

· perturbation of data
· table suppression
· field exclusion rules

Perturbation of data

To minimise the risk of identifying individuals in aggregate statistics, a technique is used to randomly adjust cell values. This technique is called perturbation. Perturbation involves small random adjustments of the statistics and is considered the most satisfactory technique for avoiding the release of identifiable statistics while maximising the range of information that can be released. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics.

The introduction of these random adjustments will result in tables not adding up. Randomly adjusted individual cells will be consistent across tables, but the totals in any table will not be the sum of the individual cell values. The size of the difference between summed cells and the relevant total will generally be very small, as demonstrated below.

Table suppression

Some tables generated within TableBuilder may contain a substantial proportion of very low counts within cells (excluding cells that have counts of zero). When this occurs, all values within the table are suppressed in order to preserve confidentiality. The following error message displayed at the bottom of the table indicates when table suppression has occurred.

Field exclusion rules

Due to potential confidentiality risks within the data, Field exclusion rules may exist that restrict the number of data items that can be added to the same table. In the NECECC TableBuilder these restrictions have been applied to the sub-state geographical data items such that only one sub-state geographic data item can be included in any one table. The sub-state geographic data items available are:

· Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) of child
· Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) of child
· Statistical area level 3 (SA3) of child
· State/Territory of child
· State/Territory of main provider

If field exclusion rules exist for certain variables, users will see the following message: "Maximum number of fields in exclusion group exceeded."