The results of Australia’s largest ever national survey are now available to all Australians to explore with the launch of the ABC’s Australia Talks Data Explorer.
ABC Managing Director David Anderson said making the data available would add to Australians’ understanding of ourselves and each other.
“The ABC’s Australia Talks survey gathered valuable information, providing insights into what is important to us,”
– he said.
“It created a valuable resource that we want to be accessible to all Australians.”
For last year’s Australia Talks project, nearly 55,000 people across every State and Territory and in every federal electorate were asked almost 500 questions about their attitudes, behaviours and experiences across a broad range of topics — including health, happiness, relationships, racism, cost of living, work, national identity and values.
In its scale and scope it was unprecedented in Australia, reflecting the opinions of a far larger sample of the population than is captured by conventional public opinion research, aiming to create a better understanding of modern Australian life.
The resulting dataset is a valuable and significant contribution to Australian social science research.
Data Explorer allows all Australians to view the results of the national survey in detail. The online tool was developed by ABC News Story Lab and is easy and engaging to use.
All data are aggregated and anonymised so individuals are unidentifiable.
Restricted access to the anonymised raw data will be made available to approved researchers through a secure, remote-access facility. More information, including the application form, is available on the ABC corporate website.
Australia Talks is a research-based initiative developed by the ABC in collaboration with social and data scientists from Vox Pop Labs. The University of Melbourne was the Australian academic partner on the project. An advisory panel of academics from other Australian universities has also helped shape the initiative.
