Māori and Linked Administrative Data: A Critical Review of the Literature and Suggestions to Realise Māori Data Aspirations.

Linked data presents different social and ethical issues for different contexts and communities. The Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) is a collection of de-identified whole-population administrative datasets that researchers are increasingly using to answer pressing social and policy research questions. Our work seeks to provide an overview of the IDI, associated issues for Māori (the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand), and steps to realise Māori data aspirations. In this paper, we first introduce the IDI including what it is and how it developed. We then move to an overview of Māori Data Sovereignty. Our paper then turns to examples of organisations, agreements, and frameworks which seek to make the IDI and data better for Māori communities. We then discuss the main issues with the IDI for Māori including technical issues, deficit-framed work, involvement from communities, consent, social license, further data linkage, and barriers to access for Māori. We finish with a set of recommendations around how to improve the IDI for Māori, making sure that Māori can get the most out of administrative data for our communities. These include the need to build data researcher capacity and capability for Māori, Māori data co-governance and accountability, reducing practical and skill barriers for access by Māori and Māori organisations, providing robust, consistent and transparent practice exemplars for best practice, and potentially even abolishing the IDI and starting again. These issues are being worked through via Indigenous engagement and co-governance processes that could provide useful exemplars for Indigenous and community engagement with linked data resources

Regional differences and similarities in the personality of New Zealanders

The current study contributes to an emerging literature on regional differences in personality. We analyse data from a national probability sample of New Zealanders (N = 6,518) to examine differences and similarities in mean levels of Big-Six personality (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and Honesty-Humility) across 63 geographical General Electorate Districts in New Zealand. Of these six core aspects of personality, only Honesty-Humility and Openness to Experience varied significantly across regions. Those from large cities (i.e., Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch) were higher in Openness to Experience, whereas those from Palmerston North, and many regions of the South Island were higher in Honesty-Humility, relative to those living in other regions of New Zealand. However, regional differences explained only a trivial amount of variance in the two traits. This research speaks directly to anecdotes about regional differences across New Zealand, and shows that, for the most part, the strong regional similarities far outweigh alleged regional personality differences across the nation

The diversity and prevalence of sexual orientation self-labels in a New Zealand National Sample

In this study, we asked participants to “describe their sexual orientation” in an open-ended measure of self-generated sexual orientation. The question was included as part of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N\ua0=\ua018,261) 2013/2014 wave, a national probability survey conducted shortly after the first legal same-sex marriages in New Zealand. We present a two-level classification scheme to address questions about the prevalence of, and demographic differences between, sexual orientations. At the most detailed level of the coding scheme, 49 unique categories were generated by participant responses. Of those who responded with the following, significantly more were women: bisexual (2.1\ua0% of women, compared to 1.5\ua0% of men), bicurious (0.7\ua0% of women, 0.4\ua0% of men), and asexual (0.4\ua0% of women and less than 0.1\ua0% of men). However, significantly fewer women than men reported being lesbian or gay (1.8\ua0% of women, compared to 3.5\ua0% of men). Those openly identifying as bicurious, bisexual, or lesbian/gay were significantly younger than those with a heterosexual orientation. This study shows diversity in the terms used in self-generated sexual orientations, and provides up-to-date gender, age, and prevalence estimates for the New Zealand population. Finally, results reveal that a substantial minority of participants may not have understood the question about sexual orientation