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2033.0.55.001 - Census of Population and Housing: Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), Australia, 2011 Quality Declaration 
Latest ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 28/03/2013   
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Technical Paper



The SEIFA Technical Paper provides information on the concepts, data, method, validation, and uses of SEIFA. It is a comprehensive reference for SEIFA 2011.

The Technical Paper is available as a PDF from the Downloads Tab. The contents are outlined below.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
1.1 What is SEIFA?2.1 The notion of relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage
1.2 Purpose and outline of technical paper
1.3 Some historical context2.2 Defining the concept behind each of the four indexes
1.4 Features of SEIFA 2011
1.5 The nature of the indexes
3. THE DATA UNDERPINNING THE INDEXES
4. CONSTRUCTION OF THE INDEXES
3.1 Developing a candidate list of variables4.1 Principal component analysis
3.2 Constructing the variables4.2 Areas with no index scores
3.3 Description of SEIFA variables4.3 Step by step process
3.4 Basic exploratory analysis of variables4.4 Technical details of each index: variables and loadings
3.5 Exploration of some selected variables4.5 Distributions of the indexes
3.6 Candidate variable list for each index4.6 Basic output: scores, ranks, deciles and percentiles
4.7 Geographic output levels for SEIFA 2011
5. VALIDATION OF THE INDEXES
6. USING AND INTERPRETING SEIFA
5.1 Thematic mapping tool6.1 Broad guidelines on appropriate use
5.2 ABS Regional Office validation6.2 Choice of index
5.3 Relationships between the indexes6.3 Using index scores for areas larger than SA1
5.4 Influential areas and variables6.4 Mapping the indexes
5.5 Comparing 2006 and 2011 rankings6.5 Using the indexes as contextual variables in social analysis
5.6 Drivers of change from SEIFA 2006 to 20116.6 Area-based quantiles versus population-based quantiles
5.7 Validation of higher level area indexes
7. BACKGROUND INFORMATION TO INFORM ANALYSES
8. CONCLUDING REMARKS
7.1 SEIFA and age
7.2 SEIFA and states/territories
7.3 SEIFA and remoteness
APPENDIXES
A. Variable specifications
B. Impact of removing Indigenous variable on IRSD
C. Interpreting Box Plots
D. Graphs of variable sensitivity analysis

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