ASSAD Steroid use

Commentary

In 2017, 1.6% of secondary students surveyed reported having ever using performance or image enhancing drugs and 0.8% reported having used them in the last year. Last month and last week use have not been published due to a relative standard error greater than 50% or small numbers.

Performance or image enhancing drugs include steroids, muscle, roids, or gear without a doctors prescription.

Please note that this indicator was updated in 2022 and replaces all previous versions.

The following estimates have a relative standard error between 25% and 50% and should be used with caution:

• 2002, 2011, 2014 and 2017 ever used performance or image enhancing drugs
• 2002, 2005, 2011, 2014 and 2017 used performance or image enhancing drugs in the last year
• 1996, 1999, 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2014 used performance or image enhancing drugs in the last month
• 1996, 1999, 2005, 2008 and 2014 used performance or image enhancing drugs in the last week.

The following estimates have not been published due to a relative standard error greater than 50% or small numbers:

• 2002 and 2017 used performance or image enhancing drugs in the last month
• 2002, 2011 and 2017 used performance or image enhancing drugs in the last week.

For the purpose of reporting the Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug survey data on HealthStats, if the 95% confidence intervals of the estimates do not overlap, they are considered to be significantly different.

Chart

Performance or image enhancing drug use: ever, last year, last month, last week, ACT Secondary Students aged 12-17 years, 1996-2017

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

A copy of the Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug survey can be found in Data collections.