Statistics and Indicators

The proportion of respondents to the ACT General Health Survey aged 5-17 years who do not drink sugar sweetened drinks has remained relatively stable between 2020 (54.7%) and 2021 (57.0%). In 2021, males (51.7%) were slightly less likely to report that they do not drink sugar sweetened drinks than females (61.4%), however this difference was not statistically significant. 

Sugar sweetened drinks includes soft drink, cordials, or sports drinks such as lemonade or Gatorade.

For the purpose of reporting the ACT General Health Survey data on HealthStats, if the 95% confidence intervals of the estimates do not overlap, they are considered to be significantly different.

Note: The indicator shows self-reported data collected through Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). Estimates were weighted to adjust for differences in the probability of selection among respondents and were benchmarked to the estimated residential population using the latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics population estimates.

Responses for children aged 5-15 years were provided by the parent/carer who knows the most about the child's health. Persons includes male, female, other and refused sex respondents and may not always add to the sum of male and female.

Statistically significant differences are difficult to detect for smaller jurisdictions such as the Australian Capital Territory. Sometimes, even large apparent differences may not be statistically significant. This is particularly the case in breakdowns of small populations because the small sample size means that there is not enough power to identify even large differences as statistically significant.