Hilda News - 2008

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11 December 2008

HILDA Survey Research Conference 2009: Announcement of Keynote Speakers

We are pleased to announce that the two keynote speakers for next years HILDA Survey Research Conference will be Professor Robert Moffitt and Professor Stephen Pudney.

Robert Moffitt is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, where he has worked since 1995. Prior to that he was Professor of Economics at Brown University. He is an applied labour economist with a prolific publication record. He is particularly well known for his work on the labour supply decisions of female heads of family and its response to the U.S. welfare system. He is also a leading exponent of econometric methods, especially in the area of panel data, and has previously served on the Board of Overseers for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. He is currently the Chief Editor of the American Economic Review, and has previously served as Editor of both the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Human Resources.

Stephen Pudney is the Director of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change at the University of Essex, a multi-disciplinary centre focussed on the life-course of individuals and the changing nature of British society. Stephen's own area of speciality is applied micro-econometrics with a focus on the economic behaviour of individuals, including applications to tax-benefit policy, poverty, labour economics and the economics of crime and illicit drugs. He works closely with the British Household Panel Survey team and is also known for his work on panel survey methods, and especially measurement error and its implications for panel data analyses.

The conference is being held on 16-17 July 2009 at the University of Melbourne. Further details about the conference, including timelines for paper / abstract submissions, can be found on the HILDA Survey website.

3 October 2008

Call for all HILDA Publications for 2008 Annual Report

This is a call for HILDA data user publications for the 2008 HILDA Annual Report.

Publications can include:

If you have a publication that is not currently listed on the HILDA bibliography web pages, please send through the details.

As a requirement for using the HILDA data, you will need to include the appropriate acknowledgement and disclaimer in any publications that cite the HILDA data, as indicated in Clause 13.2 of the Deeds of Licence.

18 September 2008

HILDA Survey Research Conference

The 2009 HILDA Survey Research Conference is being held on Thursday 16 to Friday 17 July 2009, at the University of Melbourne. The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for the discussion of research based on the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Attendance at the conference is open to all, but should be of special interest to both users of the HILDA Survey data and persons with an interest in the outcomes from longitudinal survey research in the broad fields of economic and social policy.

Submissions of papers are now being sought. Contributions towards the travel and accommodation costs of papers presenters will be available. As in past years we hope to be able to cover the cost of an economy airfare and two night's accommodation for all Australian-based presenters (but limited to one person per paper). Conference registration fees will also be waived. Part subsidies will also be available for a limited number of overseas-based speakers.

There will be two submission streams: a refereed paper stream and a non-refereed paper stream. Selection of papers for the refereed stream will be on the basis of full papers while selection of papers for the non-refereed stream will be on the basis of abstracts.

Competition for places is expected to be high, with priority being given to papers that exploit the longitudinal nature of the data. Papers on methods and cross-national comparisons are also welcome.

Submission Deadline:
Refereed stream (full papers): Friday 6 March 2009
Non-refereed stream (abstracts only): Friday 3 April 2009

How to submit: Send your abstract or full paper by email to Penny Hope

Submission Guidelines
Abstracts: Should be in the range of 200 to 400 words and should make clear what the purposes of the proposed paper are, how the HILDA data will be used and which data waves will be drawn on. Authors of selected abstracts will need to submit a complete paper by 6 June 2009.

Full papers: Papers need to be complete and should be in a format similar to that expected for submission to an academic journal.

Registration Fees: (inclusive of GST)
Early Bird: $200 (before or by 1 June 2009)
Standard: $260 (after 1 June 2009)
Student Rate: $120 (must register by Early Bird date)

Further information
Further details about the conference will be posted on the HILDA web site.

The web site will be updated regularly in the lead up to the conference.

Enquiries about any aspect of the submission process or the Conference organisation should be directed to Penny Hope, phone 03 8344 2151 or [email protected]

HILDA User Training Course
We expect to run a training course for HILDA data users just prior to the Conference. Details will be circulated later in the year.

16 September 2008

Third HILDA Statistical Report now available online

We are pleased to announce the release of the third HILDA Statistical Report - Families, Incomes and Jobs, Volume 3: A Statistical Report on Waves 1 to 5 of the HILDA Survey.

The report covers findings from all of the major areas covered by the HILDA Survey:

As of today, the Third HILDA Statistical Report is available for free download from the HILDA website.

7 August 2008

Melbourne Institute re-contracted for HILDA Survey, Waves 9 to 12

As all HILDA Survey users and other interested stakeholders would be aware, as part of the 2007 Federal Budget the Australian Government committed funding to enable a further 4 waves of the HILDA Survey to be conducted (Waves 9 to 12). I can now confirm that the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research will continue to manage the HILDA survey for that period. Following a competitive tender process, the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs selected the Melbourne Institute as its preferred provider, with a contract finalised in late July.

Wave 8 the last for Nielsen

Wave 8, which goes into the field later this month, will see the end of an era for the HILDA Survey. This will be the last wave conducted by The Nielsen Company (formerly ACNielsen). Nielsen have conducted every wave of the HILDA Survey to date, and have been closely involved in not just the data collection and entry stages, but in many other aspects of the survey, and is very proud of its contribution to the project. Unfortunately for the HILDA Survey community, the type of work involved in the HILDA Survey is no longer consistent with the Nielsen business strategy and hence they did not re-tender for survey Waves 9 to 12. I would thus like to formally thank the Nielsen organisation, and especially its many staff who have contributed to the HILDA Survey over the years, for their tireless efforts.

Welcome to Roy Morgan (and CAPI)

I can also announce that we have been very fortunate in securing a successor to Nielsen. The Melbourne Institute conducted its own tender process for a fieldwork provider and has selected Roy Morgan Research as its preferred provider for Waves 9 to 12. We are currently in the process of finalising a contract with them. Established in 1941, Roy Morgan Research is a wholly-owned Australian company, and should be well known to many of you, not least because of its Morgan Gallup Poll. The company has a long and proud history in market and social research in this country, and we are very pleased to have them on board.

The introduction of a new provider in Wave 9 is also likely to be accompanied by a major change in survey administration method - from reliance on pen-and-paper methods to computer-assisted personal interviewing. During the next 10 months or so, we will be working with Roy Morgan to develop and test a workable program and system, with a view to ensuring this admittedly large change, will have as little disruption on data continuity as possible.

External Reference Group

There have also been a few changes in the composition of the External Reference Group, which, among other things, provides advice about the development and design of the HILDA Survey from the perspective of potential users. The group now comprises the following:

David De Vaus (La Trobe University: Chair until end 2008)
Deborah Cobb-Clark (ANU: Chair starting 2009)
Janeen Baxter (University of Queensland)
Garry Barrett (UNSW)
Alison Booth (ANU)
Bruce Bradbury (UNSW)
Ann Evans (ANU)
Bryan Rodgers (ANU)
Ruth Weston (Australian Institute of Family Studies)

22 July 2008

HILDA Survey Conference Announcement

The 4th HILDA Survey Research Conference will be held on the 16th and 17th July 2009. As with previous conferences, it will be held at the University of Melbourne, with travel and accommodation subsidies available to presenters of all selected papers. Specifically, we will cover the cost of an economy airfare and accommodation for up to two nights for all Australian-based presenters (but limited to one presenter per paper). Travel subsidies will also be available for a limited number of overseas-based speakers. Further details about the submission process, including deadlines, will be circulated to this email distribution list, and also posted on the Conference website. The Conference is a great opportunity to network with other HILDA Survey data users and to discover what others are doing with the data. The HILDA team look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.

2007 HILDA Annual Report

The 2007 HILDA Annual Report is now available (should you not see the 2007 report on this page, press the Refresh button on your browser). Note that people who have ordered Release 6 will receive a hardcopy of the HILDA Annual Report in the next week or so.

Media Release

"Survey finds 50 per cent growth in household wealth in four year period" - Melbourne Institute Media Release.

23 May 2008

HILDA Wave 9 Health Module feedback

A module on health-related topics is planned for Wave 9 of the HILDA Survey, to be conducted in 2009. We invite HILDA Survey users to provide comments and suggestions on these topics and any other potential health topics. Feedback should be sent to [email protected] by 30th June 2008.

HILDA Publications

The list of publications using the HILDA Survey continues to grow. If you have a paper or publication which is not listed, please send us the details. The following are just few examples of recent publications in 2008 using the HILDA Survey:

22 February 2008

Release 6

Release 6 occurred on February 4 2008. If you would like to apply for the data for waves 1 to 6, you may do so through either an organisational licensing arrangement or through an individual licensing arrangement. Some useful tools for the HILDA data are the Release 6 User Manual and On-Line Data Dictionary. Stata users may also be interested in PanelWhiz which makes using panel data easier.

HILDA Bibliography

The HILDA bibliography is growing and lists over 180 journal articles and other publications that use the HILDA data, together with over 330 working papers, conference papers and dissertations. Have you had published something recently that used the HILDA data? Don't forget to send the details to [email protected] so we can add it to our bibliography. Some recent additions to the bibliography include:

HILDA Technical Papers

Two HILDA technical papers have been added to our series recently:

HILDA-CNEF

We expect that Release 6 of the HILDA-Cross National Equivalence File will be released soon. The Release 6 HILDA-CNEF codebooks are useful tools to have a look at in the meantime. The order form and deed of licence will be added here also once they are finalised.

Wave 7 Fieldwork

Nielsen has nearly completed the fieldwork for wave 7. We are still finalising the response outcomes for all the households and people involved and it looks like the attrition rate may fall between 5.4 and 5.7 per cent, slightly higher than the 5.2 per cent achieved in wave 6.

HILDA Database Support Officer

Would you like to work in the HILDA team at the Melbourne Institute? A position was recently advertised to provide research and database support for the HILDA Survey.

4 February 2008

Release 6 of the HILDA data now available

Release 6 of the HILDA data (which includes waves 1 to 6) is now available.