Australians and the Arts: Examining relationships between arts participation, health and socio-economic factors in Australia using the AuSSA
This presentation examines how the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) can be used as a tool to investigate arts and cultural participation across different areas of social life and to inform subsequent survey research. It draws upon three AuSSA editions in relation to arts participation and well-being.
Creative Australia is the Federal Government’s arts investment and advisory body. Among its various functions, the organisation conducts and commissions research on the arts and cultural sector, aiming to support open discussion about creative activity, to inform arts policy, and to equip the sector with information to work strategically and accountably. Creative Australia is also a member of ACSPRI and, through this membership, can add additional questions to the AuSSA. To date, Creative Australia and our partners at the University of Canberra and RMIT University have published three research reports that use data collected through the AuSSA to explore the relationship between arts engagement, health, wellbeing and socio-economic factors: Widening the Lens: Social Inequality and Arts Participation, Creating Wellbeing: Attitudes and engagement with arts, culture and health, and Digital Creativity: Online creative engagement and social connection.
In 2019, the topic for AuSSA was social inequality, which offered Creative Australia (then the Australia Council for the Arts) an opportunity to consider the connection between arts participation and social background and attitudes towards social inequality in Australia. The results of this analysis, published in Widening the Lens, showed that arts participation is linked to social class, with arts engagement increasing with higher levels of education, greater household income, and higher self-identified social class. In addition, further analysis demonstrated that an individual’s cultural engagement is influenced not only by their own education, income and occupation, but also by the occupational class of their parents.
The main theme of the 2021 AuSSA was health and healthcare, with questions on a range of healthcare issues including personal physical and mental health, attitudes towards healthcare issues such as vaccination, and trust and confidence in the health care system. The 2021 AuSSA allowed Creative Australia to examine the connection between arts, culture, health and wellbeing. The findings, published in Creating Wellbeing, showed that most Australians agree that engaging in the arts can have a positive impact on their health and wellbeing, and most are also open to ‘arts on prescription’. It also found that arts participants tend to have higher confidence in, and more favourable attitudes towards, the healthcare system.
The 2024 AuSSA was focused on digital societies, and Creative Australia used this opportunity to examine individuals’ engagement with digital creativity, adding questions on types and motivations for digital creative engagement. The resulting report, Digital Creativity, found that most Australians engage with digital creativity in some form. Those who engage with digital creativity are more likely to report loneliness than those who do not, with the link between loneliness, trust and engagement with digital creativity strongest of all in younger people.
Though the data collected through the AuSSA are not sufficient to show causality, identifying correlations can uncover relationships that can be investigated through further research, such as Creative Australia’s triennial National Arts Participation Survey. For example, the AuSSA questions on digital societies were used to update the 2025 National Arts Participation Survey with new questions relating to digital engagement with the arts.
These three reports demonstrate how the AuSSA is an invaluable tool to understand the link between arts participation and the health and wellbeing of Australians, and how it can be used to inform the design of future research - not only in the arts, but also in other fields of inquiry.