1.2 Perceived safety

Parental perception of neighbourhood safety affects children’s activities and can have a significant impact on children’s health, development and wellbeing.

Perceptions of safety often relate to perceptions of crime and social problems in the neighbourhood, previous experience as a victim of crime, and the level of trust in the local community.

In the data provided, ‘feels safe’ refers to adult respondents that reported they felt ‘safe’ or ‘very safe’.

For all indicator displays, where all years of data are comparable over time an ‘All’ category will be provided as an option in the ‘Year’ drop down display. If only a selection of specific years are comparable, these years (e.g. 2017 to 2019) will be provided as an option under ‘Year’ and ‘All’ will not be an option. See the footnotes for this indicator in the supplementary tables hyperlink below for further information.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) General Social Survey, Australia

See the supplementary table for this indicator for further information and footnotes about these data.

Indicator technical specifications

This information provides technical specifications for the summary indicator data presented in the quick reference guide.

National Framework Indicator 1.2 Perceived safety: Proportion of households with children aged 0-14 years where their neighbourhood is perceived as safe
  Definition Data source
Numerator Number of households with children aged 0-14 years where the respondent reports feeling safe or very safe when home alone at night ABS General Social Survey
Denominator Number of households with children aged 0-14 years in the reference period ABS General Social Survey

Explanatory notes

The ABS General Social Survey (GSS) asks about how safe a person feels in various circumstances – for example, when home alone at night, or when walking alone through their local area at night.

Data items on the GSS are collected at the person-level (not household-level); therefore it is the household respondent (aged 18 years and over) who is asked about their perceptions of safety (not the household as a whole). It is possible that the household respondent may be any adult in the household and not necessarily a parent. The child’s perception and understanding of their own safety may differ significantly from the adult’s.

See the supplementary table for this indicator for further information and footnotes about these data.