Community Services, Standard 01/03/2005 Housing assistance, Standard 27/07/2005 Health, Standard 01/03/2005 Homelessness, Standard 23/08/2010 Tasmanian Health, Draft 23/07/2012 Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, Standard 01/11/2012
Definition:
The country in which the person was born.
Context:
Country of birth is important in the study of access to services by different population sub-groups. Country of birth is the most easily collected and consistently reported of a range of possible data items that may indicate cultural or language diversity. Country of birth may be used in conjunction with other data such as period of residence in Australia, etc., to derive more sophisticated measures of access to (or need for) services by different population sub-groups.
The Standard Australian Classification of Countries 1998 (SACC) is a four-digit, three-level hierarchical structure specifying major group, minor group and country.
A country, even if it comprises other discrete political entities such as states, is treated as a single unit for all data domain purposes. Parts of a political entity are not included in different groups. Thus, Hawaii is included in Northern America (as part of the identified country United States of America), despite being geographically close to and having similar social and cultural characteristics as the units classified to Polynesia.
Data element attributes
Collection and usage attributes
Collection methods:
Some data collections ask respondents to specify their country of birth. In others, a pre-determined set of countries is specified as part of the question, usually accompanied by an ‘other (please specify)’ category.
Recommended questions are:
In which country were you/was the person/was (name) born?
Australia
Other (please specify)
Alternatively, a list of countries may be used based on, for example common Census responses.
In which country were you/was the person/was (name) born?
Australia
England
New Zealand
Italy
Viet Nam
Scotland
Greece
Germany
Philippines
India
Netherlands
Other (please specify)
In either case coding of data should conform to the SACC.
Sometimes respondents are simply asked to specify whether they were born in either 'English speaking' or 'non-English speaking' countries but this question is of limited use and this method of collection is not recommended.
Comments:
This metadata item is consistent with that used in ABS collections and is recommended for use whenever there is a requirement for comparison with ABS data.
Has been superseded by Person—country of birth, code (SACC 2008) NNNN Community Services, Superseded 13/10/2011, Housing assistance, Superseded 13/10/2011, Health, Superseded 22/11/2011, Homelessness, Superseded 13/10/2011
