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Definition

The age of the person in (completed) years at a specific point in time.

Components

Data Element (this item)

Representation

This representation is based on the value domain for this data element, more information is available at " Years NNN.NN ".
Description

An Age in Years, with a fractional precision element of 2 decimal places which is 0 padded if not entered. Any value entered will automatically be rounded by the system.

While the Format appears to be normal in the form NNN.NN, they do not use the DECIMAL Data Type. FLOAT64 values are stored in a particular binary format by BigQuery and other SQL systems. For example an age value of 14.25 (14 years and 3 months) is stored natively as a FLOAT64 value of 0x402C800000000000.

Data Type INTEGERNUMBER
Unit Of Measure Year (Y)
Format NNN.NN
Maximum character length 5
Values
Value Meaning Start Date End Date
Supplementary Values 999 Unknown/not stated

Comments

Context: 

Age is a core data element in a wide range of social, labour and demographic statistics. It is used in the analyses of service utilisation by age group and can be used as an assistance eligibility criterion.

Guide for use:

Age in single years (if aged under one year, record as zero).

If age (or date of birth) is unknown or not stated, and cannot be estimated, use Code 999.

National community services and housing assistance data 56 National community services data dictionary: version 8 dictionary specific:

If year of birth is known (but date of birth is not) use the date, 0101YYYY of the birth year to estimate age (where YYYY is the year of birth).

National housing assistance data dictionary specific:

In the housing assistance data collections age is calculated at 30 June for the corresponding year.

 

Comments:

National community services data dictionary specific:

Different rules for reporting data may apply when estimating the Date of birth of children aged under 2 years since the rapid growth and development of children within this age group means that a child's development can vary considerably over the course of a year. Thus, more specific reporting of estimated age is recommended.

Those who need to conduct data collections for children where age is collected in months, weeks, or days should do so in a manner that allows for aggregation of those results to this standard. 

Origin

Australian Bureau of Statistics, Standards for Social, Labour and Demographic Variables. Reference through:

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DirClassManualsbyCatalogue/76CD93AA32E74B29CA25713E0005A2EA?OpenDocument

Related content

Relation Count
Input in Derivations 0
Output in Derivations 0
Inclusion in Data Set Specifications 0
Inclusion in Data Distributions 1
As a numerator in an Indicator 0
As a denominator in an Indicator 0
As a disaggregation in an Indicator 2