National Health Survey

The National Health Survey is a large-scale population survey conducted approximately every 5 years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 1996c). Survey information is collected from face-to-face interviews. Responses for children under the age of 15 years are collected from a parent or guardian. Information included in this report comes from the National Health Survey conducted in 1995. In that year, information was collected from about 23,800 households across Australia, encompassing around 12,400 children under the age of 15 years.

The main pieces of information from the survey used in the report include:

Recent illnesses (experienced in the 2 weeks prior to the interview)

Long-term conditions (illness, injury or disability present, or expected to be present, for 6 months or more).

Type of condition (using a classification developed for the survey based on ICD-9 codes (see appendix for list of these conditions); the conditions are not necessarily medically diagnosed conditions).

Health service use (hospital use, doctor visits, other visits to health professionals) .

Some health determinants (breastfeeding, sun protection) .