Imputation Flag for Age

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Classification
Quality Statement



Classification

This variable indicates if a person's age was imputed.

Applicable to: All persons

1 Age not imputed
2 Age imputed

Total number of categories: 2

More Detailed Description

Quality Statement - Imputation Flag for Age (IFAGEP)

There are many aspects which can affect the quality of Census data; the following information should be considered when viewing data on Imputation Flag for Age (IFAGEP).

For 2006, the number of persons who had their age imputed was 1,007,166 (5.0%), compared with 682,202 persons (3.6%) in 2001. Most of the imputation in 2006 is attributable to the 4.2% of persons (including overseas visitors) in dwellings which were occupied on Census Night but did not return a completed form. Person counts for these dwellings are imputed as well as some basic demographic data such as AGEP (Age). A small part of imputation is due to the 0.2% of persons who had their age set to 'not stated' during family coding where the age provided was not consistent with family coding rules. Please refer to the Data Quality Statement for AGEP (Age) for further information about the quality of age data.


As can be seen from the graph, the imputation process set a higher proportion of ages to the 20-29 years, and 30-39 years age groups, than was found in the reporting population.Conversely, imputation of people to older age groups was disproportionately lower than for the reporting population.These results were expected, and reflect the targeted demographic imputation methodology for dwellings that did not return a form.

Before imputation occurs checks are made to ensure that Imputation Flag for Age (IFAGEP) has identified the correct records (that is, all records where age is "not stated") for imputation.

The ABS aims to produce high quality data from the Census.To achieve this, extensive effort is put into Census form design, collection procedures, and processing procedures. More details regarding these efforts can be found in:

• the Census Data Quality Declaration (regarding data relevance, timeliness, accuracy, coherence, interpretability, and accessibility);
  
• Census Characteristics documents (data quality statements for each census characteristic); and
  
• the 2006 Census Dictionary (cat. no. 2901.0) in the section titled 'Managing Census Quality'.
  

All are available from the ABS Website.

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