Statistics
NLA has an excellent page of links to "general sites for researching statistics on the Internet". The NLA page, Statistics, selected websites provides "a good starting place for researchers in this field. They lead to statistical information on a diverse range of specific topics as well as providing links to other useful sites both in Australia and overseas".
The Youth in Focus data
Youth in Focus (YiF) is a unique data source detailing the experiences of young Australian adults.
The project is jointly funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), Centrelink and the Australian Research Council (Linkage-Project LP0347164). It is carried out by the Australian National University. One of the main aims of the project is to increase understanding of the ways in which economic and social disadvantage might be transferred from one generation to the next. There are two parts inYouth in Focus.
One is the Second Transgenerational Data Set (TDS2), containing Centrelink administrative records of approximately 128,000 Australian children born between 1 October 1987 and 31 March 1988 and their parents. The latest version of TDS2 was updated to May 2007 and Centrelink is currently updating and improving the data set to coincide with new data releases planned for 2009.
The other part is the Youth in Focus survey. The first wave of the YiF survey was conducted in 2006, and approximately 4,000 youths and 4,000 parents were interviewed, including 2,430 matched pairs of youths and their parents. The second wave was conducted in 2008 for youths only. The data is in the final stage of cleaning and will be released in 2009.
In addition, to increase the number of youths in the matched sample, a top-up survey is being conducted for the youths who were non-contactable or otherwise not interviewed at Wave 1 (except those who refused to participate in the project). It is expected that the top-up survey will increase the number of matched parent–youth pairs by capturing those youths who did not respond in the first wave but whose parents were interviewed.
Further information: FaHCSIA: Paula Mance (Research and Analysis Branch) tel (02) 6244 6607 or email paula.mance@fahcsia.gov.au
(Source: FaHCSIA Research News Issue 35, September 2009, online at: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/about/publicationsarticles/research/researchnews/Documents/research_news/issue35.htm