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DATA QUALITY ISSUES


SCANNING AND IMAGING

The introduction of a new passenger card processing system from July 2001 has meant that information is now available on the frequency and impact of data item imputation. Much of this information has not been available previously. Additionally, the move to a new processing system has also given rise to new data quality issues directly associated with scanning and imaging.


DEFECTIVE CARDS

There are a small number of unreadable or damaged passenger cards for each month. ABS receives the count of these cards from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) by movement direction, box type and port of clearance. The information on these cards is then physically processed by the ABS and included in the estimates presented here.


DURATION OF STAY

From July 1998 DIMIA are able to determine the actual length of stay for departing overseas visitors and arriving Australian residents which was previously collected from information on intended length of stay supplied on the arrival and departure card by the passenger. This new method had resulted in a change in data distribution with the number of passengers staying for one year exactly declining significantly when compared with movements prior to July 1998.

The introduction of the new passenger card processing system from July 2001 has shown further evidence of rounding to exactly one year in intended duration of stay/travel as reported by visitors arriving in Australia and Australian residents departing the country. To reflect the historical movement patterns, the records with a reported duration of exactly one year are allocated to short-term and long-term. For visitors, 75% of such records are allocated to short-term and 25% to long-term. The ratio is 67:33 for residents departing Australia.


TRIPS AND MATCHING OF MOVEMENTS ON THE SECOND LEG OF TRAVEL

Each month there are records for long-term residents returning to Australia and long-term visitors departing Australia which could not be matched with DIMIA's Travel and Immigration Processing System (TRIPS) records. Records have been created directly from TRIPS for records that did not match with a passenger card and then added to the ABS processing system.


NEW ZEALAND CITIZENS

Under the Trans-Tasman Agreement, New Zealand (NZ) citizens are not required to have a visa to travel to Australia. As a result, on arrival in Australia their visa documentation cannot be used to determine whether they are either a permanent migrant or a temporary visitor, or an Australian resident returning from New Zealand. DIMIA believes that a substantial proportion of holders of NZ passports tick Box A (migrating to Australia) each time they arrive in the country, causing an overcount of NZ migrants entering Australia.

The following edits were applied to correct the overcounting of NZ migrants:


July 2001 to June 2002

With the introduction of the new processing system from July 2001, DIMIA coded all NZ citizen arrivals who had ticked Box A and had been to Australia previously (based on immigration records) to resident returning (Box C). If these people were visitors previously, this recoding had the effect of incorrectly reducing the number of NZ migrants whilst at the same time incorrectly increasing the number of NZ citizen returning residents. This problem was overcome by moving the NZ citizens that have been changed by DIMIA from Box A to Box C back to Box A.


July 2002 onwards

From July 2002, DIMIA has introduced a new edit system to ensure accurate Permanent Arrivals of New Zealand citizens statistics. Where the person ticks Box A on his/her passenger card (first arrival as a migrant) the record is verified by checking previous entries and related passenger card records and if the person is previously recorded as a migrant or resident then they will be counted as returning residents. This will result in more accurate recording of New Zealand citizens who are migrating to Australia as against those who are residents returning.


NON-RESPONSE

A1 NON-RESPONSE RATES PRIOR TO IMPUATION(a)-December 2003
	Incoming	Outgoing
OAD Variables	%	%
Citizenship (Nationality)	0.1	—
Country of Birth	0.5	0.6
Age (Date of birth)	—	—
Sex	—	—
Martial Status(b)	42.5	41.2
Category of travel	1.3	0.9
Permanent migrant
Previous/future country of residence	23.6	16.1
Overseas visitor
Intended/actual length of stay	3.4	1.7
Main reason for journey	5.9	..
Australian residents
Actual/intended time away from Australia	1.4	5.9
Main reason for journey	..	4.3
Occupation(c)	6.2	4.8
Country of embarkment/disembarkment	2.7	2.5
Whether intend to live in Australia for next 12 months	24.5	..

A2 DISTRIBUTION OF NON-RESPONSE RATES FOR STATE OF STAY BY CATEGORY OF TRAVELLER(a)-December 2003
	December
Category of traveller	%
Permanent arrivals - settlers	3.7
Long-term residents returning	0.9
Long-term visitors arriving	3.3
Short-term residents returning	0.2
Short-term visitors arriving	5.3
Residents departing permanently	3.9
Long-term residents departing	3.1
Long-term visitors departing	7.4
Short-term residents departing	1.8
Short-term visitors departing	6.3

A3 COUNTRY OF STAY/RESIDENCE NON-RESPONSE RATES BY PASSENGER CARD BOX TYPE(a)-December 2003
	December 2003
Box type	%
A: Migrating permanently to Australia	23.6
B: Visitor or temporary entrant	2.8
C: Resident returning to Australia	5.8
D: Visitor of temporary entrant departing	9.9
E: Australian resident departing temporarily	1.8
F: Australian resident departing permanently	16.1

A4 COUNTRY OF STAY/RESIDENCE NON-RESPONSE RATES BY CATEGORY OF TRAVELLER(a)(b)-December 2003
	December
Category of traveller	%
Permanent arrivals - settlers	4.2
Long-term residents returning	0.8
Long-term visitors arriving	0.3
Short-term residents returning	0.9
Short-term visitors arriving	0.2
Residents departing permanently	0.9
Long-term residents departing	0.1
Long-term visitors departing	0.6
Short-term residents departing	0.2
Short-term visitors departing	0.2