USING THE CURF
ABOUT THE CURF
IDENTIFIERS
CURF FILE NAMES
COMPARISONS WITH PREVIOUS CURFS
ABOUT THE CURF
The data included in the SEW 2011 CURF are released under the provisions of the Census and Statistics Act 1905. This legislation allows the Australian Statistician to release unit record data, or microdata, provided that it is done "in a manner that is not likely to enable the identification of a particular person or organisation to which it relates".
The ABS ensures confidentiality of the data by:
- removing name, address and any other information that might uniquely identify an individual
- changing a small number of values - particularly unusual values - and removing very unusual records
- controlling the detail available for all records on the CURF
- excluding some data items that were collected
- controlling the modes of access and restrict access to more detailed data
- placing restrictions on how the data are used, supported by both information in the User Manual: Responsible Use of ABS CURFs, the undertaking signed by the head of each organisation and the terms and conditions signed by each user.
As a result, data on the CURF will not exactly match other previously published estimates. Any changes to the distribution of values are not significant and the statistical validity of aggregate data is not affected.
IDENTIFIERS
Each person has a unique random identifier - ABSPID.
CURF FILE NAMES
The 2011 Basic CURF can be accessed on CD-ROM, the RADL or ABSDL and is available in SAS, SPSS and STATA formats. The CURF comprises the following files:
Data files
- SEW11B.csv contains the data for the CURF in Microsoft Excel format
- SEW11B.sav contains the data for the CURF in SPSS format
- SEW11B.dta contains the data for the CURF in STATA format
Information files
- The Data item list contains all the data items, including details of categories and code values, that are available on the Basic CURF.
- The Formats file is a SAS library containing formats.
- The Frequency file contains documentation of the Person level data. Data item code values and category labels are provided with weighted person frequencies of each value. This file is in plain text format.
- SAS program to translate CSV file format to SAS format.
- User Guide containing a brief description of all files included on the CURF, including predictive links to the Microdata and Data item list.
- PDF including important information included on the CD-ROM.
COMPARISONS WITH PREVIOUS CURFS
One new data item was collected in 2011, 'Whether highest non-school qualification was completed in Australia'.
Data items 'Level of education of study in previous year (all study)', 'Level of education of study in current year (all study)' and 'Level of highest educational attainment (ASCED)' have been slightly reordered to display categories in order of highest to lowest, rather than non-school qualifications above school levels.
Quality Declaration 
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