Survey quality for the International Visitor Survey

Quality assurance metrics

Below we provide the results against quality assurance metrics that are monitored to reduce sampling error in the International Visitor Survey (IVS). These include:

• Relative Margin of Error (RME).
• Sample size.
• Response rate.

See Survey error for more information about types of errors and how they apply to the IVS.

Relative Margin of Error (RME) for the year to September 2019

The Relative Margin of Error (RME) represents the percentage above and below a figure for which we can be 95% confident that the true value is within.

The International Visitor Survey is designed to have an RME of:

• 5% for total spend
• 10% for the top 6 markets — Australia, China, USA, UK, Germany, and Japan.

The target was achieved this quarter, with the RME for total spend at 3.5% for the year ending September 2019, compared with 4.1% for the year ended September 2018.

Table of RMEs

The table below shows the RMEs for the total spend estimate, and for spending by our top 6 visitor markets, along with the upper and lower bounds.

As an example of how to interpret this table, there is 95% confidence that the true value of spending by Australian visitors lies somewhere between $2,511 million and $2,831 million.

Sample size for the year to September 2019

The total sample size for the year ended September 2019 was 8,915 down from 9,645 in the year ended September 2018. This is above the target sample size of 8,900 respondents each year.

Response rate for the year to September 2019

The response rate represents the percentage of people who complete the survey as a proportion of the total surveys emailed out. The International Visitor Survey was designed with an expected response rate of 30%.

This table presents the response rates by country for the years ended September 2019 and September 2018. Falling response rates are not necessarily indicative of falling survey coverage, as the achieved sample size may compensate for this.