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
Data on Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events was collected as part of the 2009-10 Multi-Purpose Household Survey (MPHS). The Multi-Purpose Household Survey (MPHS) is collected as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS) and is designed to collect annual statistics on a small number of 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; and members of non-Australian defence forces (and their dependants). Refer to Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0) for further information regarding the LFS. In addition, the 2009-10 MPHS excluded people living in very remote parts of Australia and people living in non-private dwellings such as hotels, university residences, students at boarding schools, patients in hospitals (e.g. retirement homes, homes for persons with disabilities), and inmates of prisons.
In the Cultural Attendance component of the MPHS, respondents were asked questions regarding their attendance and frequency of attendance at libraries, archives, public art galleries, museums, cinemas, drive-ins, classical music concerts, popular music concerts, musicals and operas, theatre performances, dance performance, circuses, variety shows or revues, zoos, wildlife parks, aquariums and botanic gardens. Information was collected from one person selected at random in each selected household.
TIMELINESS
The 2009-10 MPHS was collected from July 2009 to June 2010. The survey reference period was the 12 months prior to the survey interview. Data from the survey are released in December 2010, approximately six months after completion of enumeration.
ACCURACY
The full MPHS sample was 28,554 fully responding households. The Cultural Attendance component of the MPHS was collected on approximately half this sample, resulting in 14,205 fully responding households. The exclusion of people living in very remote parts of Australia had only a minor impact on aggregate estimates, except for the Northern Territory where these people account for about 23% of the population.
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. Non-sampling error also arises because information cannot be obtained from all persons selected in the survey.
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. There are about two chances in three a sample estimate will differ by less than one standard error 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 standard errors. Measures of the relative standard error for this survey are included with this release.
COHERENCE
The ABS collected data on Cultural Attendance in the 2005-06 MPHS. The 2009-10 survey is essentially the same as the earlier survey, with the addition of questions related to attendance and frequency of attendance at archives. Data on Cultural Attendance was also collected as part of the 2002 and 2006 General Social Surveys (GSS). A study of the comparability of the results from the 2005-06 MPHS Cultural Attendance data with the 2006 GSS data showed that the two were significantly different - resulting in the 2002 and 2006 GSS data being excluded from time series analysis in this publication. Cultural Attendance data was also obtained in the Survey of Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues, collected as a supplementary survey to the Monthly Population Survey (MPS) in June 1991, March 1995 and April 1999.
INTERPRETABILITY
The Attendance at Selected Cultural Venues and Events publication contains tables and a Summary of Findings to aid interpretation of the survey's results. Detailed Explanatory Notes, a Technical Note and a Glossary are also included to provide information on the terminology, classifications and other technical aspects associated with these statistics.
ACCESSIBILITY
In addition to the Adobe PDF publication, the tables and associated relative standard errors are available in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format on the website. Selected tables are also available at the state level.
Additional data may be available on request. For a list of data items see the 'Downloads' tab of the publication. Note that detailed data can be subject to high relative standard errors and, in some cases, may result in data being confidentialised.
For further information about these or related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Centre on 1300 135 070.
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