Graduate Careers Australia’s (GCA) Australian Graduate Survey (AGS) has been run annually since 1972, making it a very rich source of information for many types of analyses related to education, teaching quality, and the graduate labour market. Despite its enormous potential for analysis, the data assembled by GCA are not currently collated across years.

GCA is undertaking a long-term project to develop these data files into a consistent series of annual SPSS files and related documentation and to eventually identify, harmonise and collate key variables across lengthy periods of the survey that will form single data files covering a range of years. For example, a single file showing employment and salary figures covering all years of the AGS should be possible, as will single CEQ and PREQ files covering the years of their existence.

In short, the outcomes of this project will be:

• Each annual AGS data set will be cleaned, documented and available for sector use in SPSS and other formats.
• Historical data files spanning the years of the AGS will be developed and these will contain harmonised data for key variables. Some of these variables will span the entire period of data collection but other variables will be limited to the period for which the data were gathered (such as CEQ and PREQ data) or the period over which differing coding schemes can be successfully harmonised.

Most of the documentary information to do this work (such as annual survey manuals and hard copy questionnaires) is available and this has been scanned into PDF form and is being organised and codified and will be made available with each data set where possible.

This file: HDF Project - file and document availability and notes summarises the status and availability of the files and data available on this site.

Please click below to access the historical data files.

Historical Data File Downloads by Year

Comments and questions can be directed to [email protected].