The abs have no idea your name or phone number. Its all directed to the household. Your household has strategically been selected from data collected from census.
They choose differently areas for various reasons. Socio economic age gender etc.
yes you can contact the ABS to discuss exemption generally your reason would need to be a pretty good reason. As there has been already alot of time and money spent before you get your letter.
Trust me they will be door knocking. The field interviewers need to tick boxes for what time over different days they have called.
As previously mentioned so many government departments, private enterprise and universities heavily rely on information collected from these surveys
which they explicitly admitted in respect of the controversial 2016 Census (so-called ādata matchingā / ācross-referencingā, retaining ānames and addressesā, etc.) ā¦ and I donāt imagine that they stopped doing that for the 2021 Census and hence all Censuses from 2016 onwards should be considered controversial.
ā¦ to the point that some have proposed scrapping the Census completely. The government does indeed know a lot about everyone. Even the ABS itself has proposed changing from every 5 years to every 10 years (which would require a legislative change), with the goal of reducing the cost overhead of doing formal Censuses, and between formal Censuses they can fill in the gaps anyway from the information that the government already knows.
I also have no confidence in govt ability to safeguard information.
The integrity of the research is also questionable if participation is compulsory. As the survey in question is a health one, Iād like to know how it managed to circumvent NHRMC research guidelines.
Of course, if it is not compulsory you end up getting misleading results. While the maths may be fine, the statistics count only those who have chosen to participate. Researchers have all sorts of ways of teasing more sensible numbers from the garbage they know they collect, but they need to know that it is garbage and why it is garbage. With non-compulsory surveys, a large proportion of the population self-excludes.
Just one example. If ABS surveys were optional, it is highly unlikely that we would know how badly our health system fails indigenous Australians - as a fairly large proportion of that population have a (well-founded) distrust of government.
People are less likely to lie in compulsory surveys than to simply hang up on a random call from some company pollster. (Citations needed, you would want to check this with a statistician and a sociologist.)
People can still give false information when it is compulsory to partake in research. A good survey is designed to check for this.
Its my understanding NHMRC guidelines specify people need to be given the opportunity to opt out. This is important eg if answering any question(s) distresses a person. I canāt readily determine if the ABS is exempt from NHMRC guidelines.
