4. Selected methodological issues for analysis of the 2002 NATSISS

The most commonly used data for information on Indigenous Australians is the Census of Population and Housing. The five-yearly census allows us to generate reasonably reliable social statistics about Indigenous people as a by-product of the introduction, in 1971, of a question which asked whether people identify as Indigenous. However, the census is a blunt instrument that is designed primarily to count the national population rather than to measure and track changes in complex socioeconomic conditions of population sub-groups. Furthermore, census questions are limited in their number and scope by the exigencies and costs involved in collecting information from the entire population. Surveys are more flexible and cost-effective instruments for collecting a wide range of information, even though the resulting data is subject to sampling error.