The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes - 2024 - Digital Societies

The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) is Australia’s main source of data for the scientific study of the social attitudes, beliefs and opinions of Australians, how they change over time, and how they compare with other societies.

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The survey is used to help researchers better understand how Australians think and feel about their lives. It produces important information about the changing views and attitudes of Australians as we move through the 21st century. Similar surveys are run in other countries, so data from AuSSA survey also allows us to compare Australia with countries all over the world.

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AuSSA is also the Australian component of the International Social Survey Project (ISSP). The ISSP is a cross-national collaboration on surveys covering important topics. Each year, survey researchers in some 40 countries each do a national survey using the same questions. Here are some examples of surveys in other countries that are the equivalent to AuSSA:

 

The ISSP focuses on a special topic each year, repeating that topic from time to time. The topic for the upcoming 2024 survey is "Digital Socities". This will be the first time this module is fielded.

 

​Data collection for the AuSSA 2024 is due to begin in September 2024, and due to complete in May 2025.

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How will participants be selected?

AuSSA aims to survey a representative sample of adult Australians. The fairest way of doing that is to draw a random sample from the Australian Electoral Roll. This means every Australian citizen has an equal chance of having their views included in the survey, and means that researchers are able to use statistical techniques to make inferences about Australian society overall on the basis of characteristics of the sample. ACSPRI has been named in a Federal Regulation as a permitted user of the Electoral Roll for the purposes of inviting persons to participate in the AuSSA.

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We will randomly select at least 5000 citizens from the electoral roll. Each of them will be posted an explanatory letter, followed by a questionnaire booklet and reply paid envelope. Up to three reminder mailings will be sent for participants who do not return a booklet. We expect around 1000 will return a completed questionnaire.

 

​Selected questions

Questions asked of respondents will cover topics such as digital inclusion, media use, digitisation, civic engagement, surveillance and attitudes to technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots

 

Contributing questions to the AuSSA 2024

 

Running a high quality, nationally representative survey requires the support of individual researchers willing to include their own questions in return for sponsorship of the survey. The fee will be $1,000 (exc GST) per question (i.e. per 'tick') for the full sample of 1000, or $400 to be included in any one of the 4 sub-samples. Please contact surveys@acspri.org.au for more information. Each of the 4 waves of data collection is to a distinct sample (i.e. the design is a repeated cross sectional survey)

  1. The first wave of data collection is due to run in September 2024. Any contributed questions must be finalised by 28 July 2024.
  2. The second wave began data is due to run in October 2024. Any contributed questions must be finalised by 28 August 2024.
  3. The third wave of data collection is due to run in November 2024. Any contributed questions must be finalised by 11 September 2024.
  4. The fourth wave of data collection is due to run in February 2025. Any contributed questions must be finalised by 10 January 2025.

 

Access to results from AuSSA 2024

 

AuSSA data will be submitted to the Australian Data Archive in mid 2025 and should be available on the site in late 2025.

 

 

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For more information:

Tel. 1800 122 251 (free call)
Email: surveys@acspri.org.au