9223.0 - Road Freight Movements, Australia, 12 months ended 31 October 2014 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 29/10/2015  First Issue
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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

Results from the Road Freight Movements Survey provide a nationwide picture of road freight movement by articulated and rigid trucks over the reference period 1 November 2013 to 31 October 2014. These data are used for policy and planning purposes, including the allocation of Federal road funding; road planning, building and maintenance; enhancing road safety and other activities.

The Road Freight Movements Survey collected information from 16,000 registered articulated and rigid trucks in Australia. Estimations based on detailed cross classifications are likely to result in high relative standard errors.

Vehicle movements are classified to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) as broadly defined and reported by respondents.

The main output data items are total kilometres travelled, tonne-kilometres and tonnes carried. The tonne-kilometres is not obtained directly but is derived for all records from collected distance and load weight information.


TIMELINESS

The population frame for the Road Freight Movements Survey was generated from the Motor Vehicle Census (MVC) as at 31 January 2013.

There are 16,000 selections used for the three reference periods. The first period beginning 1 November 2013 with the third and final period finishing 31 October 2014.


ACCURACY

The survey is designed to obtain quality estimates for the key data items of total kilometres travelled, tonne-kilometres and tonnes carried.

The overall response rate for 2014 was 77%. The need for imputation of unanswered questions on returned questionnaires is quite high, with the percentage contribution to the estimates of tonne-kilometres from both partial and full imputation being 34%.

For further information refer to the Data Quality section of the Technical Note.


COHERENCE

The Road Freight Movement Survey was undertaken as an additional component to the 2014 Survey of Motor Vehicle Use (SMVU), published in (cat. no. 9208.0). The SMVU 2014 and the road freight component were designed together to provide coherent estimates at the state of registration by vehicle type level for total distance travelled, tonne-kilometres and total tonnes.

Care should be taken in drawing inferences between transport surveys such as the 2000 Freight Movements Survey and the Survey of Motor Vehicle Use. These surveys are designed for level estimates not movement estimates, and are collected using different methodologies. Refer to the Technical Note.

INTERPRETABILITY

Information on interpreting the results of this survey is provided in the Technical Note.


ACCESSIBILITY

The Road Freight Movements Survey release is available on the ABS website with data contained in a Data Cube. The ABS may have other data available from the Survey on request.