DATA SOURCES AND DEFINITIONS
Information for this article was drawn from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC), 2009, General Social Survey (GSS) 2006 and Time use Survey (TUS) 2006.
It should be noted that no data about the social participation of persons in hospitals, nursing and convalescent homes and hospices, were collected in any of these surveys. The data relates only to people in private dwellings.
Data taken for age groups vary between the different surveys, which may impact on the comparability of results. The GSS collected data from those aged 18 years and over, the TUS collected data from those aged 15 years and over and SDAC collected social participation data about people aged 5 years and over.
Disability status has been derived in different ways in the surveys. The TUS and GSS both used the Disability module. The Disability Module applies the same criteria as the SDAC to identify people with a disability and determine the severity of their restriction, but uses ten questions and a series of prompt cards, compared to more than 140 questions used in SDAC.
The resulting ‘Severity of Disability’ measure from TUS and GSS is intended to be broadly comparable to the same concept in SDAC. However, analysis has shown that the Disability module tends to overestimate the incidence of disability in the population. The Disability module does, however, provide comparable results to the SDAC for people with profound or severe core activity limitations. People with profound or severe core activity limitation are therefore a key focus of the analyses in this article. For more information about comparability of the Disability Module, please see ABS Sources of Disability Information, 2003-2008 (cat. no. 4431.0.55.002).
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