Welfare and the Voluntary Sector in Australia

Abstract

While the database gives some idea of the shape of the sector across Australia, it provides no information on how the organizations are constituted or operate. To address these issues, 14 focus groups were conducted with workers and participants from the community sector across Australia between February 1995 and August 1996. Groups were arranged using a random sample of towns and metropolitan suburbs and their listed organizations from the database, stratified in order to ensure national coverage within all states and territories and reflect population levels.¹