ACTGHS social connection and safety, children

Commentary

68.7% of respondents to the 2021 ACT General Health Survey aged 5-17 years reported that they do after school or weekend programs like sports, art, dance, music classes, and other clubs and activities, 94.2% have a group of friends to play with, 93.4% have an adult other than their parent/main carer who they can rely on for advice or guidance and 85.4% have safe places in their neighbourhood to play. There was no significant difference between males and females in any of the social connection and safe places categories in 2021.

Questions introduced in 2020.

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.

Data for children are not collected every third year (i.e. 2019 and 2022).

Responses for children aged 5-15 years were provided by the parent/carer who knows the most about the child's health. Persons includes respondents who identified as male, female, other and those who refused to answer and may not always add to the sum of male and female.

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

Social connection and safe places, children aged 5 to 17 years, ACT General Health Survey, 2020-2021

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. Do you do after school or weekend programs like sports (for example, swimming, soccer, cricket, netball), art, dance, music classes, and other clubs and activities?

Yes; No; Don't know; Refused

Q. Are there safe places in your neighbourhood and community where you feel comfortable to hang out/play with friends, like playgrounds, parks or community centres?

Yes; No; Don't know; Refused

Q. Do you have a group of friends to pay with or hang around with?

Yes; No; Don't know; Refused

Q. Other than adults in your home, is there at least one other adults in your school, neighbourhood, or community who knows you well and who you can rely on for advice or guidance?

Yes; No; Don't know; Refused

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.