Introduction
This is the third release from the 2008-09 Business Characteristics Survey (BCS) and presents summary data for a selection of topics including nature of business ownership, collaborative arrangements, franchising agreements, performance measures, barriers, government financial assistance, finance sought, innovation, business use of information technology, skills, markets and competition. Data included are additional to those outputs from the BCS released previously in Summary of IT Use and Innovation in Australian Business 2008-09 (cat. no. 8166.0) and Innovation in Australian Business 2008-09 (cat. no. 8158.0).
The approach to quality assurance for the BCS aims to make the best use of ABS resources to meet user prioritised requirements - both in terms of data quality and timing of release. The approach specifies the level and degree to which each data item is quality assured, noting that only some of the total output from the BCS is able to be quality assured to the highest standards. Different priorities are assigned to groups of data items, with highest priority being assigned to key point in time data on business use of IT and innovation.
In general, the data items contained in this release have a lower user priority and, therefore, have been given relatively less attention during the quality assurance phase of processing. Most of the data contained in this release are 'as reported' by businesses with limited editing and cross-validation being applied. References to any relevant quality issues that the reader should take into consideration are made within the commentary associated with the respective data item. More information is available from the contact person for this release.
Structure of this release
There are two components to this release: web based information and datacubes. The datacubes contain the detailed data that underpins the tables and commentary included in the web based information. Many of the datacubes present data cross-classified by innovation status and industry by employment size.
Please note, this is a web release only and is not available in pdf format.
Revisions in this release
Some of the data contained within this release were first included in the initial release from the 2008-09 BCS, Summary Indicators of IT Use and Innovation in Australian Business 2008-09 (cat. no. 8166.0). As indicated in that release, quality assurance for the 2008-09 BCS was still underway and estimates included were subject to revision for future related releases. A relatively minor revision was made to Internet income and has been annotated in the tables presented.
Inquiries
For further information about this publication, contact Andrew Puljic on Perth (08) 9360 5229
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