Appendix: Research Methodologies and Data Sources

Summary

ABS surveys are described and discussed in the relevant ABS publications. This appendix focuses on other data sources.

The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys (AWIRS)

There are several major recent survey databases that have been produced under the sponsorship of the Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) (now the Department of Workplace Relations and Small Business). By far the most important of these are the 1990 and 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys (AWIRS90 and AWIRS95 respectively). AWIRS90 was conducted from October 1989 to May 1990, and is reported upon in Industrial Relations at Work (Callus et al. 1991). It consisted of two surveys. The first was a personal interview survey of 2004 workplaces, involving the administration of between one and four questionnaires in each workplace, plus (in approximately 85 per cent of them) a self-completed questionnaire containing factual data on employment and other matters. The second was a telephone survey, using a shorter questionnaire, of 349 small workplaces with 5 to 19 employees. The sample frames for both surveys were designed by the ABS from DIR specifications and drawn from its register of establishments. The population from which the sample for the main, personal interview survey was drawn comprised all workplaces with 20 or more employees in all industries except two: agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and defence. The response rates were: for the main survey, 86 per cent, and for the small workplace survey, 89 per cent.