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INDEX FOR CODING RESPONSES

CODING NON-STANDARD RESPONSES

Responses provided in statistical and administrative collections do not always reflect formal names of categories in the Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups (ASCCEG). For example, Sicilian may be a response to a question about ancestry in a survey but it does not exactly match the title of the category "3103 Italian". A coding index is therefore necessary to act as a link between responses and the classification.

The accurate coding of ancestry responses within Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) collections is carried out by automated coding systems that link high-frequency responses to their corresponding categories in the ASCCEG via a coding index. These automatic coding systems are based upon the information contained in the ASCCEG coding index.


ASCCEG CODING INDEX

The ASCCEG coding index connects more than one thousand high-frequency ancestry responses to each of their corresponding cultural and ethnic groups within the ASCCEG, enabling responses to be assigned accurately and quickly to the appropriate category of the classification. The index includes formal ancestry titles, contemporary and traditional titles, spelling variations and misspellings. The contents of the index are drawn from high-frequency responses identified in statistical surveys and in the Census of Population and Housing. Classification codes for particular responses have been allocated by reference to literature in the field and consultation with academics, government and private organisations with relevant knowledge and expertise; and by analysis of ABS data. In addition to its coding function, the index can be used to clarify the nature, extent and varietal content of each classification category.

The ASCCEG coding index may be requested by contacting standards@abs.gov.au.


CODING RULES

The following coding rules outline the parameters used to build the entries in the coding index:

• responses which match exactly with an entry in the coding index are assigned the code allocated to that index entry

• responses which have a partial match with an entry in the coding index and only differ in terms of spelling, use of abbreviations or acronyms, are assigned the code allocated to that index entry

• responses which have a partial match with an entry in the coding index and only differ in terms of qualifying or extraneous words are assigned the code allocated to that index entry

• responses which do not match with an index entry or do not relate to a separately identified cultural and ethnic group in the classification are assigned a residual (nec) category code, or a supplementary (nfd) code

• responses which are not precise enough to be coded to any category should be assigned the 'inadequately described' supplementary code

• when coding what appear to be multiple responses, if all the words appearing in the response are contained in a single index entry, assign the code listed

• when coding what appear to be multiple responses, if all the words appearing in a response are not contained in a single index entry, assign a code for each word representing a cultural or ethnic group that does appear in the index.