Data use considerations
Family coding processes
During Census family coding, all children under 15 years of age are allocated a nominal parent if their parent/s are not present in the household on Census Night, or if the parent/s were not reported as temporarily absent. Nominal parents can be the child's sibling, grandparent, aunt/uncle or other related individuals.
Grandparent families are recognised where a grandparent/s is allocated as the nominal parent or where there is only a grandparent-grandchild relationship present in the family and no parent child relationship. When a parent is temporarily absent from the family and their relationship to the child cannot be determined, the relationship cannot be coded. This can result in a small number of children being reported incorrectly as grandchildren when a parent is simply absent on Census Night.
RLGP may not represent caring responsibilities
Users should note that grandparent-grandchild relationships are constructed for the purposes of family coding in order to create a statistical family. It may not be representative of who provides care.
For example, a scenario could be that a 20 year old grandchild lives with her grandmother. She is a full-time student and is dependent on her grandmother. Alternatively, she may have moved in with her grandmother specifically to take care of her. It is important that users do not make assumptions about grandparent families.
Data quality
An overcount of step children and an undercount of natural or adopted children for couple families has been identified for Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory and Other Territories. Victoria was partially affected. South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory remain unaffected. Only step children in couple families where the spouse was temporarily absent were impacted. These children have been incorrectly categorised to the step child of male parent or female parent categories for both Child type (CTPP) and Child type (including grandchildren) (CTGP) variables. These children have also been incorrectly categorised to step child under 15, student step child or non-dependent step child for both Relationship in household (RLHP) and Relationship in household (including grandchildren) (RLGP) variables. This also means these families have been incorrectly categorised as step families in the Family blending (FBLF) variable.
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.
