Proficiency in Spoken English - Collection Methods
The question on Proficiency in Spoken English is asked after a question which identifies people whose first language spoken is a language other than English, or people who speak a language other than English at home. This sequencing is necessary because the Proficiency in Spoken English variable is used to measure the number of people who may potentially suffer a disadvantage as a result of a lack of competence in spoken English, rather than assess the spoken English capacity of the Australian population in general. It is considered unnecessary and inappropriate to ask people whose only language is English, how well they speak it.
The Proficiency in Spoken English question should be asked after a language question which filters out people who only speak English. There are four filter questions to choose from, derived from the following ABS statistical standards:
Filter question modules for standard question
Standard question modules
Short question modules
The standard and short question modules may be accompanied by a brief explanatory note about why language data is collected and detailed instructions about how to answer the question. The explanatory note can be included with the chosen question module or in supplementary documentation. The recommended text for the explanatory note is in
Appendix A.
Standard input categories
The standard input categories for Proficiency in Spoken English are the same as the categories of the classification and also includes the two supplementary categories, 'Not stated/Inadequately described' and 'Not applicable':
- Very well
- Well
- Not well
- Not at all
- Not stated/Inadequately described
- Not applicable
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