4818.5 - Community Preparedness for Emergencies, Western Australia, October 2011 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 30/05/2012   
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EXPLANATORY NOTES


INTRODUCTION

1 This publication presents statistics collected from Western Australian households in the 2011 State Supplementary Survey, Community Preparedness for Emergencies, Western Australia, 2011, during the two weeks commencing Sunday 9 October 2011.

2 The survey was conducted as a supplement to the ABS Labour Force Survey (LFS), by either telephone questionnaire or face to face interview, from any responsible adult in the household. This adult answered questions on behalf of the household. Information was sought from 2,867 households and data was obtained from 93.9% of these households.

3 All population estimates presented in the tables in this release have been rounded to the nearest 100.


DEFINITIONS

4 Preparedness refers to the results of measures to ensure that, should an emergency occur, communities, resources and services are capable of responding to, and coping with, the effects. Source: Information paper: Emergency management information development plan, Australia, 2006 (cat. no. 1385.0)

5 A major emergency refers to an event that threatens or damages the dwelling or threatens or harms occupants of the dwelling. Principal categories include bush fires, floods, earthquakes, cyclones and other hazardous events.


SCOPE

6 The survey Community Preparedness for Emergencies, Western Australia, 2011, was conducted on a subset of the full sample of private dwellings in WA that were included in the LFS. The survey covered all persons who were usual residents of private dwellings except:

  • members of the Australian permanent defence forces
  • certain diplomatic personnel of overseas governments, customarily excluded from censuses and surveys
  • overseas residents in Australia
  • members of non-Australian defence forces (and their dependents) stationed in Australia
  • households consisting entirely of visitors; and
  • persons living in very remote areas of WA.


COVERAGE

7 Coverage rules were applied to ensure that each person was associated with only one dwelling and hence had only one chance of selection in the survey.


AUSTRALIAN STANDARD GEOGRAPHY CLASSIFICATION (ASGC)

8 Statistics in this release have been compiled based on the Australian Standard Geography Classification (ASGC), July 2010, (cat. no. 1216.0).


COMPARABILITY OF ESTIMATES OVER TIME

9 Community Preparedness for Emergencies was also the State Supplementary Survey topic in 2007. Factors that affect the comparability of 2011 estimates with those of 2007 are described below.


Changes to data items

10 The 2011 survey incorporates the following changes:
  • removal of the following:
      • whether any household members have a vocational/voluntary role requiring them to assist in an emergency
      • whether anyone in the household has a mobile phone
      • whether any of the mobile phones are used for text messaging, twitter, internet access, email
  • addition of the following:
      • whether dwelling has house and contents insurance
      • means of obtaining emergency evacuation information
      • whether anyone in the household that does not speak English would understand instructions in English.


Implementation of the 2010 edition of the Australian Standard Geography Classification (ASGC)

11 The ASGC is amended and released annually; differences which exist between editions represent a break in series. Users should familiarise themselves with those differences by referring to the Australian Standard Geography Classification (ASGC), July 2010, (cat no. 1216.0).


RELATED PUBLICATIONS

12 Users may wish to refer to the following ABS publications:
13 Users may also wish to refer to the following, related publications:

ABS WEBSITE

14 Other information relating to Western Australia can be found on the ABS website
<www.abs.gov.au>. See the Western Australia theme page under Topics@ a Glance/Regional.

15 Previous State Supplementary Survey topics can be found on the Supplementary Surveys page, under the Services for State and Territory Government section of the Western Australia theme page under Topics@ a Glance/Regional.


EFFECTS OF ROUNDING

16 Estimates in this publication have been rounded and discrepancies may occur between sums of the component items and totals.