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This survey collects statistics on children aged 0-12 years and their families. Information is collected about the use of formal and informal care, requirements for additional preschool/kindergarten or formal care, patterns of child care attendance, child care costs, the use of the child care benefit, working arrangements used by parents to help care for their children and parental income. The survey presents characteristics of children aged 0-8 years in their early learning years through the collection of information about the types of formal, non-formal and informal learning activities they engage in and the environments in which these activities take place. Information is also collected about patterns of attendance at preschool/kindergarten and school, including historical and usual attendance, and frequency of attendance.

Users are able to tabulate, manipulate and analyse data to their individual specifications.

Steps to confidentialise the dataset are taken to ensure integrity of data, optimise its content and maintain confidentiality of respondents. They include removing any information that might uniquely identify an individual, reducing the level of detail for some items and collapsing some categories.

The CURF includes metadata files and documentation to enable users to read the data into SAS or SPSS software. Users can then analyse the data using any method supported by SAS or SPSS, including cross tabulation and correlative analyses.

The CURF is only available through the Remote Access Data Laboratory (RADL). A Technical manual explaining data content, technical details and conditions of use is available on the ABS web site and via the 'Information by' link on the RADL home page.

For more information, see Access to ABS CURFs from the Services we provide page.

Basic CURFs for 1999, 1996, 1993 and 1984 were originally published as Cat. No. 4444.0.30.001.

1999 Expanded CURF was originally published as Cat. No. 4444.0.55.001.

2002 Expanded CURF was originally published as Cat. No. 4444.0.55.003.