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

The Multipurpose Household Survey (MPHS) is collected as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS) and is designed to collect statistics for a number of small, self-contained topics. The scope of the LFS is restricted to people aged 15 years and over and excludes:

• members of the permanent defence forces
• certain diplomatic personnel of overseas governments usually excluded from census and estimated resident populations
• overseas residents in Australia
• members of non-Australian defence forces (and their dependants).

In addition, the MPHS excludes:

• households in Indigenous Communities
• people living in non-private dwellings (e.g. hotels, university residences, students at boarding schools, patients in hospitals, inmates of prisons and residents of other institutions (e.g. retirement homes, homes for persons with disabilities).

One eighth of the total households in the LFS sample each month are selected for the MPHS. In these households, a usual resident aged 15 years or over is selected at random to respond to the MPHS.

The Participation in Selected Cultural Activities topic collects information on the characteristics and number of people participating in arts and cultural activities in the previous 12 months, regardless of whether the participation is as a result of a person's work or as a hobby activity. However, participation through formal education is excluded. The topic focusses on the following broad categories:

• cultural activities (including whether participated in selected cultural activities, number and type of activities involved in and barriers to undertaking (more) cultural activities)
• cultural involvement (including hours involved per week, reasons why involved, whether an activity was made available to the public (including over the Internet), and whether an activity was undertaken as part of a club or interest group)
• work in cultural activities (including type of payment arrangement for participation and amount of income/payment received).

Governments of all levels recognise the need to encourage involvement in arts and culture as it contributes to quality of life. The data collected provides broad level information that assists in monitoring a range of programs and policies in this field.


TIMELINESS

The MPHS is collected annually with enumeration undertaken in each month over the financial year period from July 2013 to June 2014. The survey reference period relates to participation in cultural activities in the 12 months prior to the survey interview. Generally, data from the MPHS are released approximately 6–8 months after enumeration.


ACCURACY

The Participation in Selected Cultural Activities topic comprised a sample of just over 27,300 fully responding households, which represented a response rate of 76.1% (after taking sample loss into account).

Two types of error are possible in an estimate based on a sample survey: non-sampling error and sampling error. Non-sampling error arises from inaccuracies in collecting, recording and processing the data. Every effort is made to minimise reporting error by the careful design of questionnaires, intensive training and supervision of interviewers, and efficient data processing procedures.

Sampling error occurs because a sample, rather than the entire population, is surveyed. One measure of the likely difference resulting from not including all dwellings in the survey is given by the standard error (SE). There are about two chances in three a sample estimate will differ by less than one SE from the figure that would have been obtained if all dwellings had been included in the survey, and about 19 chances in 20 the difference will be less than two SEs. Measures of the relative standard errors (RSE) of the estimates for this survey are included with this release.

All aggregate statistics presented in tables have been randomly adjusted to avoid the release of any data that may inadvertently identify an individual. The technique to adjust the data is called perturbation. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the data.


COHERENCE

The ABS previously collected information on Participation in Selected Cultural Activities in the 2010–11 MPHS and the survey questions have remained unchanged for 2013–14. Prior to 2010–11, the ABS conducted a Survey of Work in Selected Culture and Leisure Activities in 1993, 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007, however, because of differences in concepts, survey methodology and enumeration periods, this data is not comparable to the MPHS series.

After each Census, population estimates are normally revised back five years to the previous Census year. As announced in the June 2012 issue of Australian Demographic Statistics (cat. no. 3101.0), intercensal error between the 2006 and 2011 Censuses was larger than normal due to improved methodologies used in the 2011 Census Post Enumeration Survey. The intercensal error analysis indicated that previous population estimates for the base Census years were over-counted. An indicative estimate of the size of the over-count is that there should have been 240,000 fewer people at June 2006, 130,000 fewer in 2001 and 70,000 fewer in 1996. As a result, population benchmarks have been revised for the last 20 years rather than the usual five.

Consequently, estimates of particular populations derived from the 2013-14 MPHS may be lower than those published in 2010-11 for this topic. Therefore, comparisons of estimates of the number of people with previous years are not possible. However, for comparable data items, comparison of rates or proportions between years is appropriate.


INTERPRETABILITY

To aid in the interpretation of the cultural participation data, detailed information on concepts, definitions, terminology and other technical aspects of the survey can be found in the relevant web pages included with this release.


ACCESSIBILITY

All tables and associated RSEs are available in Excel spreadsheets and can be accessed from the Downloads tab.

Data is also available through the TableBuilder environment. TableBuilder is an online tool for creating tables and graphs. For further details, refer to the Microdata Entry Page.

Additional tables can also be produced on request. The Downloads tab includes an Excel spreadsheet containing a complete list of the data items available. Note that detailed data can be subject to high RSEs and, in some cases, may result in data being confidentialised or not being available.

For further information about these or related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service.