Person—proficiency in spoken English, code N

Identifying and definitional attributes

• Community Services (retired), Standard 01/03/2005
• Disability, Standard 13/08/2015
• Health, Standard 01/03/2005
• Housing assistance, Standard 10/02/2006 [Non Dictionary]

Value domain attributes

Representational attributes

Collection and usage attributes

CODE 0     Not applicable (persons under 5 years of age or who speak only English)

Not applicable, is to be used for people under 5 year of age and people who speak only English.

CODE 9     Not stated/inadequately described

Not stated/inadequately described, is not to be used on primary collection forms. It is primarily for use in administrative collections when transferring data from data sets where the item has not been collected.

Source and reference attributes

Standards for Statistics on Cultural and Language Diversity 1999. Cat. no. 1289.0. Canberra: ABS.

Data element attributes

Collection and usage attributes

This metadata item is only intended to be collected if a person has a main language other than English spoken at home; and/or first language spoken is not English.

Recommended question:

How well do you speak English? (tick one)

1. Very well

2. Well

3. Not well

4. Not at all

Generally this would be a self-reported question, but in some circumstances (particularly where a person does not speak English well) assistance will be required in answering this question. It is important that the person's self-assessed proficiency in spoken English be recorded wherever possible. This metadata item does not purport to be a technical assessment of proficiency but is a self-assessment in the four broad categories outlined above.

This metadata item is not relevant to and should not be collected for persons under the age of five years.

While agencies are encouraged to use the recommended question described above, it is acknowledged that this is not always possible in practice. For example, where the data collection is a by-product of the provision of a health or community service, the information may be ascertained using different means. However, this standard should be used wherever practically possible.

This metadata item identifies those people who may suffer disadvantage in terms of their ability to access services due to lack of ability in the spoken English language. This information can be used to target the provision of services to people whose lack of ability in spoken English is potentially a barrier to gaining access to government programs and services.

In conjunction with Indigenous status, the main language other than English spoken at home and the country of birth, this metadata item forms the minimum core set of cultural and language indicators recommended by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Source and reference attributes

National Health Data Committee

National Community Services Data Committee

Relational attributes