The EWP assessment identified that imbalances exist across the medical specialty workforces.
The EWP covers telephone numbers of households who choose to have their telephone listed in the printed white pages telephone directory.
The EWP scale was: Green: no current perceived shortage - sufficient workforce for existing expressed service demand, minimal number of vacancies, no difficulty filling positions, and short waiting times.
The EWP provides context for interpreting the workforce projection results, rather than assuming the workforce projections started from a position of balance.
The EWP sample and LA-RDD sample costs were compared on the basis of achieving the same precision of estimates as that for an assumed simple random sample of 1,000 respondents, taking into consideration the different design effects of the EWP sample and RDD sample.
The EWP was determined from expert opinion from Australian state and territory government health departments, private employers and the profession, and an analysis of current vacancies and waiting times (where relevant and available).
Then the total calling time, total number of diallings, total number of costed diallings, and total number of completed interviews, were calculated over all the attempted numbers to obtain the whole LA-RDD sample and over all the EWP listed numbers to obtain the EWP sample respectively.
This list was checked against the EWP so that banks of 10 continuous numbers with no numbers in the EWP were removed from the sampling frame.
Mobile numbers are not routinely listed in the EWP, so owners can choose, at a cost, to have their mobile number listed in the EWP.
Though Naipaul is no longer attending the event, other illustrious names on the EWP programme include Vikram Seth, Hari Kunzru and Jason Goodwin.
Kunzru stepped into the breach to deliver the opening speech this morning in place of Naipaul, who withdrew from the EWP earlier this week "by mutual agreement" with the organisers following a row over his criticisms of Islam.
