ACTGHS safety, adults

Commentary

Respondents to the 2022 ACT General Health Survey were significantly more likely to feel very safe/safe walking in their local area alone after dark (71.2%) than neither safe or unsafe (15.8%) or unsafe/very unsafe (12.9%). Males were significantly more likely to report feeling very safe/safe (86.8% vs 52.4%) and significantly less likely to report feeling neither safe or unsafe (8.6% vs 23.3%) or unsafe/very unsafe (5.1% vs 20.8%) than females in 2022. Respondents aged 18 to 24 years (27.0%) were significantly more likely to report that they feel neither safe or unsafe than respondents aged 45 to 64 years (13.1%) in 2022. There was no significant difference between males and females or between age groups in the other safety categories in 2022.

Local area included in and around local public transport, local shops and their street. Excludes respondents who are never alone in this situation.

For the purpose of reporting the ACT General Health Survey data on HealthStats, if the 95% confidence intervals of the estimates do not overlap, they are considered to be significantly different.

Note: The indicator shows self-reported data collected through Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). Estimates were weighted to adjust for differences in the probability of selection among respondents and were benchmarked to the estimated residential population using the latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics population estimates.

Perceptions of safety is collected every third year (2019 and 2022). Respondents are aged 18 years and over (i.e. no children).

Persons includes male, female, other sex and refused sex respondents and may not always add to the sum of male and female.

The 2022 estimate for respondents aged 18 to 24 years has a relative standard error between 25% and 50% and should be used with caution.

The 2019 estimate for respondents aged 18 to 24 years has not been published due to small numbers or a relative standard error greater than 50%.

Statistically significant differences are difficult to detect for smaller jurisdictions such as the Australian Capital Territory. Sometimes, even large apparent differences may not be statistically significant. This is particularly the case in breakdowns of small populations because the small sample size means that there is not enough power to identify even large differences as statistically significant.

Chart

Proportion of adults aged 18 years and over who feel safe/very safe, neither safe or unsafe and unsafe/very unsafe, ACT General Health Survey, 2019-2022

Data

To access the data, select "View source data" link at the bottom of the visualisation. This link will open up a data table that you can download.

Codes and sources

Q. How safe or unsafe do you feel walking in your local area alone after dark?

Very safe
Safe
Neither safe or unsafe
Unsafe
Very unsafe
Never alone in this situation
Don't know
Refused

Never alone, don't know and refused responses were excluded from analysis.

A copy of the ACT General Health Survey questionnaires can be found in Data collections.