TABLEBUILDER CONFIDENTIALITY


Specific confidentiality information applicable to the 2014 National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection (NECECC) TableBuilder product, is outlined in this section. This will assist users to understand, interpret and tabulate the data,

For general information relating to TableBuilder and instructions on how to use the features of the TableBuilder product please refer to the User Manual: TableBuilder (cat. no. 1406.0.55.005).

For detailed questions relating to use of TableBuilder and analysis of the data generated from the TableBuilder, please contact Microdata Access Strategies on 02 6252 7714 or via microdata.access@abs.gov.au.


CONFIDENTIALITY FEATURES IN TABLEBUILDER

In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, all the data in TableBuilder are subjected to a confidentiality process before release. This confidentiality process is undertaken to avoid releasing information that may allow the identification of individual persons, families, households, dwellings or businesses.

Processes used in TableBuilder to confidentialise records include the following:

· perturbation of data
· table suppression
· field exclusion rules

Perturbation of data

To minimise the risk of identifying individuals in aggregate statistics, a technique is used to randomly adjust cell values. This technique is called perturbation. Perturbation involves small random adjustments of the statistics and is considered the most satisfactory technique for avoiding the release of identifiable statistics while maximising the range of information that can be released. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics.

The introduction of these random adjustments will result in tables not adding up. Randomly adjusted individual cells will be consistent across tables, but the totals in any table will not be the sum of the individual cell values. The size of the difference between summed cells and the relevant total will generally be very small, as demonstrated below.

Table suppression

Some tables generated within TableBuilder may contain a substantial proportion of very low counts within cells (excluding cells that have counts of zero). When this occurs, all values within the table are suppressed in order to preserve confidentiality. The following error message displayed at the bottom of the table indicates when table suppression has occurred.

Field exclusion rules

Due to potential confidentiality risks within the data, Field exclusion rules have been deployed that restrict certain combinations of data items that can be added to the same table. These restrictions have been applied to combinations of items where their disaggregation together and by SA2 or state/territory of child could allow the isolation of records with unusual characteristics to a small geographic region.

The data items on the child file that are subject to field exclusion rules are:

· Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) of child
· Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) of child – Australia
· Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) of child - State
· Statistical area level 2 (SA2) of child
· State/Territory of child
· State/Territory of main provider
· Service Delivery Setting
· Provider funding overview for the child

And on the worker file:

· State/Territory of service provider
· Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) of service provider

If field exclusion rules exist for a combination of certain variables, users will see the following message: "Maximum number of fields in exclusion group exceeded."