Introduction

Rates of childhood immunisation in Australia are high and have been maintained at a high level for the past decade. Although most children are fully immunised, even small lapses in coverage can increase the risk of highly contagious diseases like measles. For these reasons, it is important to identify potentially modifiable factors that are related to incomplete immunisation.

Information about immunisation is available for children in Growing up in Australia: the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). These data were obtained from the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR). This provides data users with opportunities to use the demographic, social and health information available in LSAC to examine many different issues relating to immunisation. This sort of research will continue to inform the development of best practice for the control of vaccine preventable diseases in Australia. This paper describes the linked data and provides guidance to data users on how to prepare it for analysis.