2901.0 - Census Dictionary , 2006 (Reissue)

ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 13/07/2007 Reissue

Page tools: Print

Contents >> Short Definitions and Classifications - 2006 >> Country of Birth of Mother - Characteristics 2006

Country of Birth of Mother

On this page:
Description
Image of Question
Classification
Quality Statement

Description

There are three country of birth variables:

Country of Birth of Person (BPLP), which records a person's country of birth;

Country of Birth of Mother (BPFP), which indicates whether a person's mother was born in Australia or overseas, and;

Country of Birth of Father (BPMP), which indicate whether a person's father was born in Australia or overseas.

In Censuses prior to 2006, these variables were referred to as 'Birthplace' rather than 'Country of birth'. More Detailed Description

Image of Question

2006 Household Form - Question 15

Classification

Applicable to: All persons

1. Born in Australia

2. Born overseas
& Not stated
V Overseas visitor

Total number of categories: 4

More Detailed Description

Quality Statement - Country of Birth of Mother (BPFP)

There are many aspects which can affect the quality of census data. The following information should be considered when viewing data on Country of Birth of Mother (BPFP).

Note: Prior to 2006, this variable was referred to as Birthplace of Female Parent rather than Country of Birth of Mother.

This data was captured automatically from mark-box responses on the form, so the risk of processing error is minimal. Sample checks of the data were undertaken to ensure an acceptable level of quality.

The non-response rate for 2006 was 7.1% compared with 5.6% for 2001. This increase is partly attributable to the 4.2% of persons who were in dwellings which were occupied on Census Night, but did not return a completed form. Persons were imputed into these dwellings together with some demographic characteristics. However, the values for Country of Birth of Mother (BPFP) remain not stated. In 2006, 3.0% of persons (594,083) returned a form but did not answer the country of birth of mother question. In 2001, 2.1% of persons were imputed into dwellings for which no form was received.

In a small proportion of cases (testing has indicated that this is less than 1%), respondents provided an incorrect number of responses (for BPFP, respondents were asked to only mark one response). In these cases, responses were accepted in the order they appeared on the form and the extra responses were rejected.

Additional sources of country of birth information are available from ABS publications and associated collections, including:

Australian Labour Statistics, Apr 2004 (cat. no. 6105.0), which contains a feature article titled: Spotlight on Country of Birth
Australian Demographic Statistics, Sep 2004 (cat. no. 3101.0), which contains a feature article titled: Population by Country of Birth
Australian Social Trends (various years)(cat. no. 4102.0), which contain a number of articles relating to country of birth
Perspectives on Migrants, 2007 (cat. no. 3416.0), which contains country of birth data in a series of articles about a range of migrant and ethnicity related issues.

The only regular data on country of birth of parents published by the ABS are derived from birth and marriage registrations.

The ABS aims to produce high quality data from the census. To achieve this, extensive effort is put into census form design, collection procedures, and processing procedures. More details regarding these efforts can be found in:

the Census Data Quality Declaration (re data relevance, timeliness, accuracy, coherence, interpretability, and accessibility);
the Census Characteristics documents (data quality statements for each census characteristic); and
the 2006 Census Dictionary (cat. no. 2901.0) in the section titled 'Managing Census Quality'.

All are available from the ABS Website.
Back to top