About Australian Community Surveys

The Australian Community Survey by NCLS Research

    

NCLS Research aims to provide a picture of social attitudes, spirituality, religion and wellbeing in Australian communities.

To this end, Australian Community Surveys have been conducted by NCLS Research and partners in 1998, 2002, 2009, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024. Some areas canvassed by the survey include:

Goals

The goals for the Australian Community Survey are:

1. To compare the attitudes of church attenders and the wider community on a range of social issues.
2. To track religiosity trends over time, including religious beliefs, practices and experience.
3. To evaluate how the Australian community views the role of churches in society.

Methodology

The Australian Community Survey was an online survey conducted in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 by NCLS Research, with a sample drawn from a large online research panel. The survey was distributed by Online Research Unit (ORU). ORU meets ISO 20252 and ISO 26362 standards for both market research and panel work.

The online survey instrument is around 60 questions and replicates questions from the National Church Life Survey and earlier Australian Community Surveys.

2016-2021: The Australian sample of around 1,200 persons was representative of the adult population on age, gender and location. 

2022: The Australian sample of around 3,090 persons was representative of the adult population on age, gender and location. 

For all samples, results were weighted to be representative of the population on age, gender and education, in accordance with methodology used for the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes.  

Error guide

2016-2021: The maximum margin of error on a random sample of 1258 at a 95% level of confidence is 2.8%. That is, assuming a simple random sample, there is a 95% chance that a sample result falls within ±2.8% of the result for the Australian population.