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Measurement issues

56. Changes in national boundaries create coding difficulties. In order to maintain consistency of coding in all applications it is preferable that each country response be coded according to national boundaries existing at the time of the data collection. Therefore, all responses relating to a country which currently exists, but which has undergone boundary changes at some time in the past, are coded to the named country. For example, all persons who give their country of birth as 'Poland' are coded to Poland, even though the boundaries of Poland may have changed since they were born and they may have in fact been born in a place that is now in Germany. Birthplace responses which relate to particular cities or regions which are now in one country, but which may have been in another country at the time of birth, should be coded to the country the city or region is in at the time of collection of the data. For example, the response 'Danzig' should be coded to Poland not to Germany and it is included as such in the coding index.

57. The normal constraints affecting statistical collections, such as problems with confidentiality or standard errors which may not permit the collection or output of data for some of the categories at the lower levels of the classification apply to the variable Country of Birth of Person.


Related classifications

58. Correspondences have been prepared between SACC 1st Edn and SACC 2nd Edn. An additional correspondence between the SACC and the United Nations Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use is also available to enable the conversion of Australian data for international comparisons. These correspondences can be found in the SACC (cat. no 1269.0) on the ABS website.