8710.5 - Housing Motivations and Intentions, Western Australia, Oct 2012 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 21/05/2013   
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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

State Supplementary Surveys occur on an ad hoc basis, when a need for additional statistical data has been identified. State Supplementary Surveys occur as a supplement to the October Labour Force Survey. Data is collected on a topic of interest to State Government agencies and is specific to individual Australian states or territories. The data required can either be new, or a repeat of a previous survey topic, to obtain updated statistical data. For 2012, the State Supplementary Survey topic for Western Australia (WA) was Housing Motivations and Intentions (HMI). This was a repeat of the State Supplementary Survey conducted in 2005 and 1998.

The survey collected information from Western Australian households on their current and future housing intentions, and factors that influence housing decisions concerning the location and characteristics of the dwelling individuals choose to live in. This information will help to understand the impact of significant changes in housing motivations and intentions since the previous survey was conducted in 2005. This information will be used in the development of housing policy, planning legislation and housing development regulation.

The following Western Australian State Government agencies and organisations are major users of this data: WA Department of Housing; WA Department of Planning; WA Department for Communities; and the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia.


TIMELINESS

The WA HMI 2012 survey was conducted as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey throughout October 2012. Statistics compiled from the data are released approximately seven months after the reference period. It is unknown at this stage whether the survey will be run again.


ACCURACY

Data items were collected from Any Responsible Adult (ARA) on behalf of one person who was randomly selected from the household. Information was sought from approximately 3,600 households with the number of fully responding households being 2,796.

After taking into account sample loss, the WA HMI 2012 survey achieved a response rate of 90%.

Estimates in this publication are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors:

  • Sampling error is the difference between the published estimate derived from a sample of dwellings and the value that would have been produced if all dwellings in scope of the survey had been included. For further information, refer to the Technical Note.
  • Non-sampling error may occur in any collection whether it is based on a sample or a full count of the population such as a census. Sources of non-sampling error include non-response, errors in reporting by respondents or recording answers by interviewers, and errors in coding and processing data. Every effort is made to reduce the non-sampling error by careful design and testing of the questionnaire, training of interviewers, extensive editing and quality control procedures at all stages of data processing and follow-up of respondents.
For further information regarding sampling and non-sampling errors, please refer to the Technical Note.


COHERENCE

There are no other data sources with which ABS data compiled from this survey can be directly compared. The WA HMI survey is an ad hoc survey and is not part of the ongoing ABS program.

This survey topic was previously run as a State Supplementary Survey in 2005. Users are advised that there have been some changes to the data items collected across the two surveys (see paragraph 20 of the Explanatory Notes for details).

While the ABS seeks to maximise consistency and comparability over time by minimising changes to the survey, sound survey practice requires ongoing development to maintain the integrity of the data, its relevance to the changing needs of users and the efficiency of the collection.

Caution should be used when comparing statistics from the WA HMI survey over time, or the WA HMI survey with other related publications, as different methodologies or classifications may have been used.

The ABS has conducted several other surveys on housing motivations and intentions. These include: As the State Supplementary Survey is collected in tandem with the LFS, some changes to the LFS, for example modifications to the sampling method, may also impact on the State Supplementary Surveys. For a full list of changes made to the Labour Force Survey, see Chapter 20 of Labour Statistics: Concepts, Sources and Methods, Apr 2007 (cat. no. 6102.0.55.001).

For other related publications, please refer to the Related Publications section of the Explanatory Notes.


INTERPRETABILITY

This publication contains tables with annotated data and a summary of the main findings to assist with the interpretation of the results of the survey. Detailed Explanatory Notes, a Technical Note and a Glossary are also included providing information on the terminology, classifications and other technical aspects associated with these statistics.


ACCESSIBILITY

Findings from the WA HMI 2012 State Supplementary Survey are available free of charge in web and Excel format from the ABS website. Additional data may be available on request. Note that detailed data can be subject to high relative standard errors, and in some cases, may result in data being confidentialised.

Links to other data releases relating to Western Australia can be found on the ABS website, via the Regional portal, under Topics @ a Glance.

For further information about these or related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.