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QUALITY DECLARATION - SUMMARY


INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

For information on the institutional environment of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), including the legislative obligations of the ABS, financing and governance arrangements, and mechanisms for scrutiny of ABS operations, please see ABS Institutional Environment.

RELEVANCE

Each year the ABS conducts individual state specific surveys as part of the Monthly Population Survey (MPS) program. Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility was the December 2010 State Supplementary Survey topic for Victoria.

The survey collected information on persons not in the labour force, current employment characteristics, work preferences and employee requests for flexible work arrangements all of which have implications for participation in the workforce and by extension labour productivity. As such, survey results may provide a further understanding of the Victorian workforce. A breakdown by capital city and balance of state is available in some of the tables within the publication.

TIMELINESS

The Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility survey was conducted as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey throughout Victoria during the two weeks commencing 5 December 2010.

ACCURACY

The number of fully responding persons for the Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility survey was a total of 3495 households in Victoria.

The total response rate in Victoria was 89%.

Two types of error can occur in estimates that are based on a sample survey: non-sampling error and sampling error. To assist users in understanding the estimate of these errors, relative standard errors (RSEs) are provided for every data cell in tables. For further information please refer to the Technical Note.

COHERENCE

The Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility survey is not part of the ongoing ABS MPS program. Extreme caution must be used when comparing the 2010 survey with other related publications as different methodologies have been used.

The ABS has been conducting surveys related to the topic of Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility on an irregular basis. Previous ABS surveys related to Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility used a variety of sampling methods, estimation methods, concepts, data item definitions and classifications. These include:

• Australian Labour Market Statistics, Australia, July 2011, cat. no. 6105.0
• Australian Social Trends, March 2011, cat. no. 4102.0
• Flexible Working Arrangements in Queensland, October 2010, cat. no. 6342.0.80.002
• Workforce Participation and Workplace Flexibility, Western Australia, October 2010, cat. no. 6210.5
• Persons Not in the Labour Force, Australia, September 2010, cat. no. 6220.0
• Underemployed Workers, Australia, September 2010, cat. no. 6265.0
• Working Time Arrangements, Australia, November 2009, cat. no. 6342.0
• Barriers and Incentives to Labour Force Participation, Australia, July 2008 to June 2009, cat. no. 6239.0
• Employment Arrangements, Retirement and Superannuation, Australia, April to July 2007, cat. no. 6361.0

• main features, which include commentary and graphs
• data cubes which present a variety of data items in 40 tables and 40 Relative Standard Error tables.