Disclosure of disability in the Australian Public Service: What the statistics tell us

Abstract

What can large datasets tell us about the propensity of workers to disclose their disability? By comparing two large employee-based datasets from the same underlying population, this study aims to identify patterns of disability disclosure across age, gender, education, and public service classification levels. Data are obtained from the Australian Public Service Employment Database (150,000+ employees), a collection of information of every federal Australian public employee, and the APS State of the Service Employee Census (100,000+ respondents), an anonymous, non-compulsory survey of the same population. People with a disability who have not disclosed to their agency may be captured in the anonymous survey. The two datasets are compared regarding how many individuals have a disability at each variable (i.e. male/female, etc.). The data show that patterns of disclosure do differ across job classification levels and age, but not by gender or education levels.