Changes made to the Community Attitudes to Privacy 2007 report

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Changes made to the Community Attitudes to Privacy 2007 report

A revised report of the Community Attitudes to Privacy study now appears on this website, replacing the earlier version of the report that had appeared here prior to 26 September 2007. Details of the amendments made in the revised report are as follows:

Some respondents to the survey provided more than one answer to the questions associated with the following four sections of the report:

• "Attitudes towards health professionals sharing patient information" (section 10.2, page 47)
  
• "Employer activities and employee privacy" (section 11.1.1, page 53)
  
• "Attitudes towards employers using surveillance equipment to monitor the workplace" (section 11.3, page 57) and
  
• "Attitudes towards employers monitoring telephone conversations" (section 11.4, page 58).

The charts and tables in these four sections therefore showed results indicating that slightly more than 100% of people had responded to the questions. To remove any potential bias in these results due to multiple responses, the data for these questions has been recalculated (i.e. any respondent who provided more than one response to a question has been removed from the analysis for each question) and the figures in the charts/tables and accompanying text have been amended accordingly. It is important to note the new base (n) in each of the charts/tables is now slightly different to all respondents (1503), but only slightly. The amended results do not differ significantly from the results obtained when multiple respondents were included in the analysis, and the trends in the amended data (both downward and/or upward) for each question also remain the same.

The section, "Attitudes towards unsolicited marketing material" (section 7.5, page 29) also allowed respondents to give multiple responses but, unlike with the above sections, the data has not been recalculated. The question this section was based on was asked in previous studies and, on those occasions, multiple responses were allowed. Clarification has been provided in the report in this regard.

The results for the male and female respondents disagreeing with the survey question for the section, "Attitudes towards a unique identifier for all Australian Government departments" (section 9.1, page 39, see chart 16), has also been amended. The proportion of males and females disagreeing with the question had been incorrectly reported, with the amended results showing that a greater number of males and females disagree with the question. This change does not affect any of the other results shown in the chart (i.e. the Total and Household Income results).