Usual Address Five Years Ago Indicator (UAI5P)
This variable records whether a person lived in the same address five years ago as their current usual residence, whether they lived elsewhere in Australia five years ago, or whether they usually lived in another country five years ago. This variable is applicable for all usual residents of Australia, except for persons aged less than five years.
How this variable is created
Data for this variable is based on the response to the question of where the person usually lived five years ago. An image of this question in the Census Household paper form is provided below.
The responses to this question are captured automatically from mark box responses on the form. Where the indicator mark boxes have been left blank by a respondent but they have reported an address five years ago, Usual Address Five Years Ago Indicator is derived based on the address reported. If the respondent does not report either the indicator or the address, they will be set to not stated. However, where a person who is aged under 20 years (i.e. they were aged under 15 years one year ago) does not respond to the usual address five years ago question, but their parent(s) did respond, their Usual Address Five Years Ago Indicator is set to the same value as their parent.
For Interviewer Household Forms, primarily used in discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the response options on the form are different. Instead of asking if respondents lived in their place of usual residence five years ago, the form asks if people lived in 'this dwelling' (i.e. the dwelling in which they were enumerated), 'another dwelling in this community' or 'elsewhere, please specify'. The data is re-derived to ensure that the data is comparable to those enumerated using other form types. For Interviewer Household Forms, mobility is considered at the community level rather than at the individual dwelling level.
Variable history
The question relating to Usual Address Five Years Ago Indicator was first asked in the 1971 Census and has been asked at every census since then. The date listed for five years ago has been updated.
In Censuses prior to 2011, there was a separate category for people who had the same address five years ago as for their address one year ago. This allowed users to differentiate between those people who lived at a different address five years ago and one year ago, compared with those who lived at the same address five years ago and one year ago. While the data is collected and processed in the same way, this information is no longer publicly available as it is merged with 'elsewhere in Australia' prior to release.
Non-response rate
The majority of item non-response is attributable to the people who did not respond to the Census. Refer to item non-response rates for more information. The second and smaller contributor to item non-response is when people return a Census form but may not answer a particular question(s). For more information, refer to Understanding Census data quality.
Item non-response rates are a measure of how many people did not respond to a particular question as a proportion of the total number of people the question was applicable to. In this instance the response is left as not stated.
The non-response rate for this variable was 7.3% in 2016 (6.0% in 2011).
Further information
More information on Usual Address Five Years Ago Indicator is available in the 2016 Census Dictionary.
For more information related to Usual Address One Year Ago Indicator, see the data quality statements for Place of Usual Residence, Place of Usual Residence One Year Ago, Place of Usual Residence Five Years Ago, Usual Address One Year Ago Indicator.
Household form question image
Question 10 as it appeared on the 2016 Census Household Paper Form:
A text only version of the online Census Household form is available from the Downloads tab.
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