Part II Collecting and analysing data Statistical surveys are used to collect direct quantitative and qualitative information about the population. A statistical survey, also called a sample survey, only collects data from a subset of the population that is being studied, with the goal of drawing inferences for the entire population. Surveys can be a cost-effective means of collecting information in situations where complete enumeration (see below) is not practical or where data from administrative sources are not available. Many indicators for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for example, were compiled using statistical survey data, due to the lack of accurate administrative records. Examples of statistical surveys include demographic health surveys, labour force surveys and household income and expenditure surveys. Time-use surveys are another important type of survey, especially for monitoring women’s human rights and gender equality issues. These surveys are quantitative summaries of how individuals ‘spend’ or allocate their time over a day/week, and are especially useful for seeing differences between women and men in time spent on paid and unpaid labour. For example, time-use surveys in many countries have shown that women spend far more time on unpaid and household work than men and work longer hours in total when unpaid work is taken into account. This information is important to reveal some of the barriers to women’s human rights enjoyment, for example, why they may face more problems accessing education or paid decent work opportunities. More than 85 countries worldwide have conducted timeuse surveys. In the Asia Pacific region, this includes Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. Time-use surveys are usually conducted by governments but in some cases, NGOs have conducted them on a community basis. CASE STUDY: TIME-USE SURVEYS ON UNPAID CARE WORK IN AUSTRALIA The Australian Human Rights Commission published a report in 2013 called Investing in Care, exploring the human rights, gender equality, economic and social impacts of unpaid care provision and distribution in Australia, and identifying key policy reform options. The research included statistical analysis on the prevalence of unpaid care work and workforce participation based on Australian Bureau of Statistics sources, including time-use surveys. Censuses are complete enumerations of all members of a population of a country or territory. In other words, everyone is counted. Countries usually conduct censuses of population, housing, agriculture and industrial establishments. A population census is usually conducted at ten-year intervals because of the complexity and cost of the operation. Censuses provide baseline data on the structure and key characteristics of the population and on variables that do not change rapidly. The complete enumeration of the population allows variables of interest to be available at the lowest geographical level, including, in principle, for homeless and nomadic groups. 6.1.3. Perception and opinion surveys Perception and opinion surveys aim to poll a representative sample of individuals for their personal views on a given issue. The nature of the information collected is, for the most part, subjective and therefore not quantifiable. To aggregate data, as well as transform these perceptions and opinions into indicators, questions are often asked in a way that the answers are predetermined or in “closed” formats (such as multiple choice questions). Ordinal scales are also often used (e.g. rating satisfaction with a policy on a scale of 0-10). Chapter 6: Finding secondary data | 61