ABARE Fuel and Electricity Survey, Financial Year 2001/2002
Contents
F. Respondent Load
F1 Respondent load
On average, how long will a respondent be expected to spend in completing each questionnaire? How has this estimate been derived? Will the time taken by respondents to complete the survey be recorded? (F1)
Note. Mail-based surveys should include a 'time taken to complete questionnaire' question. For telephone interviews this 'time taken' information should be recorded.
The time taken for each respondent to complete the survey will be dependent on the size of the company, the number of operational entities and how it maintains its energy records.
Based on feedback from respondents from earlier Fuel and Electricity Surveys, it is estimated that the time taken for respondents to complete the survey questionnaire will be as follows:
- for individuals and single operation respondents: approx. 30 minutes;
- for large company respondents: approx. 1 - 3 hours;
- for large company respondents with multiple operations: approx. 1 - 4 hours.
Each survey form will include a 'time box' for each respondent to record the time taken to complete the survey.
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F2 Reduction in respondent load
What steps have been taken to reduce the burden on small businesses, eg use of a reduced questionnaire? (F2)
There have been a number of steps taken to ensure that the burden on survey respondents has been minimised. These steps include:
- the streamlining of each of the survey forms, involving the number of questions per form being kept to a minimum;
- the forecast data period requested has been substantially reduced from 15 years (as per previous surveys) to 5 years; and
- fuel, equipment and industry classification codes to be used in the survey will be provided to respondents via the ABARE website (www.abareconomics.com) and facsimile (upon request) to reduce the amount of paper handled by respondents.
In addition, the inclusion of a 'time box' in the current survey and the subsequent analysis of the time taken to complete the survey forms will ensure that the burden on future survey respondents will be minimised.
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F3 Confidentiality
What commitments have been made to preserve the confidentiality of respondents? How will these be implemented? (F3)
ABARE will provide the following commitments to ensure the confidentiality of survey respondents:
- all survey respondents will be provided with a written commitment that all provided data will be subject to ABARE's confidentiality provisions;
- all published data will be in an aggregated format;
- there will be no identification of respondent individual company names or activities in the publications or reports released by ABARE;
- all data provided to third parties will require a written release form signed by the survey respondent prior to that data being authorised for release; and
- all survey data will be maintained in a secure environment within ABARE.
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