Australian Child Wellbeing Project Technical Report

The Australian Child Wellbeing Project (ACWP) was conducted from 2012 – 2015 using a mixed-methods, child-centred approach. Young people’s perspectives were used to inform a nationally representative survey of children’s wellbeing in the middle years. The aims of the ACWP survey were to benchmark child wellbeing in Australia and to provide useful information for services that promote young people’s healthy development. A final outcome of this project was to make the extensive ACWP database publically available in order to provide further opportunity to exploit the rich data and improve understanding. Accordingly, this technical report consolidates the research conducted by ACER during the three-year study. It provides supporting information about technical aspects of the main survey and its resulting reports, and for facilitating secondary data analyses of the ACWP database. Specifically, it details issues related to survey design, implementation and data analysis. Results from the ACWP main survey are not reported in the technical report, but are presented in the final report. This technical report and data user guide contains an overview of the design, sampling, and data collection activities of the ACWP main study conducted in 2014. In addition, it reports the technical aspects of the first and second stage statistical and thematic analyses presented in the ACWP Final Report, along with guidelines about using the ACWP database.