2026-11-26 –, Cullen Room
The 2026 Australian Worker Exposure Survey (AWES), commissioned by Safe Work Australia, was designed to address a key evidence gap in Australian work health and safety monitoring: the limited availability of national data on occupational exposures before illness, injury or compensation claims occur. While workplace surveillance systems often rely on lagging indicators such as workers' compensation claims and fatalities, AWES demonstrates the potential of population-based surveys to measure exposure risks earlier and at scale.
From a methodological perspective, the study provides a case study in integrating specialist occupational hazard exposure assessment tools into a large-scale mixed-mode social survey. A key feature of the study was the incorporation of OccIDEAS, a task-based occupational exposure assessment system, into the survey workflow, API integration, and use of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) coding tool. Rather than asking respondents whether they were exposed to specific hazards, the survey collected detailed information about occupations, work tasks, processes and controls. These data were then linked to expert-developed assessment algorithms to generate individualised exposure estimates. This approach addresses the challenge that workers may not recognise or accurately report exposure to specific agents, while providing greater precision than estimates based solely on occupational classifications or job titles.
The study collected data from 6,617 Australian workers aged 15 years and over using a mixed-mode, multi-source design incorporating the Life in Australia™ probability-based panel, non-probability online panels, computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), and targeted industry recruitment. Respondents were routed into occupation-specific modules, enabling assessment across a range of physical and chemical hazards while also capturing psychosocial workplace conditions. The design supported broad coverage of the Australian workforce but introduced methodological challenges relating to occupation coding, module allocation, questionnaire routing, respondent burden, mode harmonisation and data integration across systems.
This presentation will discuss the practical and methodological lessons from embedding task-based occupational exposure assessment within a national survey environment. It will examine the survey architecture required to support complex occupational pathways, the integration of external exposure assessment systems through APIs, and strategies for balancing analytical utility with respondent experience. The presentation will also reflect on the value of combining physical, chemical and psychosocial hazard measurement within a single survey framework and consider implications for future occupational health surveillance studies seeking to deliver scalable, transparent and prevention-focused evidence.
Alison Eglentals is a Research Director at the Social Research Centre, where she leads large-scale social and public policy research for government and non-government clients. Her work spans survey methodology, mixed-mode data collection, questionnaire design, quantitative analysis and program evaluation, with a particular focus on complex national studies.
Alison has extensive experience designing and delivering probability and non-probability surveys across a wide range of policy areas, including work health and safety, digital technologies, media and communications, privacy, workforce issues and community attitudes. She has led the methodological design and implementation of several major national data collections.
Her research interests include innovative survey methods and developing practical approaches to collecting high-quality evidence to inform policy and decision-making.