Data use considerations
Across the community, a wide variety of living arrangements exist with complex family structures. The quality of family data in the Census is partly dependent on people’s ability to describe these relationships within the constraints of the generalised questionnaire format required by a Census. Reporting relationships in respect of 'Person 1' only, can make it difficult to establish all the relationships which exist in a household, or to identify whether more than one family is living in the dwelling.
A maximum of three families can be coded to a household. Lone person households can contain visitors. Visitor only households can contain overseas visitors.
The 'Other not classifiable' category consists mainly of occupied dwellings where a form was not received (3.8% of all occupied private dwellings). It also includes households:
- which the ABS Field Officer determined were occupied on Census Night but where the ABS Field Officer could not make contact
- that contained only persons aged under 15 years
- which could not be classified elsewhere in this classification because there was insufficient information on the Census form.
Care should be taken when comparing this variable to other family data from within the ABS or external organisations or agencies. The definition of a family can differ between statistical collections and may not match Census definitions.
This variable does not have a non-response rate as it is created during Census processing by using responses from more than one question on the Census form.
