Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 3:13:07 to 3:20:45
Review of the methodology used by AIHW to collect smoking and vaping data through the National Drug Strategy Household Survey.
Topics: Health
Speakers: Dr Zoran Bolevich, Hon Anne Ruston, Alistair Beasley, Unknown Speaker, Hon Jenny McAllister, Blair Comley
Ms Roxon became our chair in uh I believe 2024 or late 2023
for you but um executive director community first nations insights division senator since 8 September 2023 September
so just following on on in relation to the um the the smoking and vaping data um so what's your methodology
of the um product suggests uh and uh it is based on a sample of about just over 17,000 households I think it was 17 and a half thousand correct households uh that was surveyed uh in 2025 so the field work was completed in 2025 um and it was um uh a um mixed uh paper based and online uh survey methodology that was used so
is the raw data that you use um predominant or determined purely by the participants' response on the survey or are the responses sort of
verified through any other means uh I will defer to Mr Beasley my understanding is it is purely based on um uh response this
to survey questionnaire yeah basically um Senator um yeah Dr.
demand bias that sometimes occurs um so do you account in any way for demand bias you know people answering the question the way they either think you want to hear the answer or the way they want to be reflected?
Yeah so so I mean I think I think what I would say is this is a survey that has a long history uh and a technical advisory group that considers these sorts of issues and so in terms of designing the survey itself um the sample um uh the the the the nature of the questions and so forth we seek to minimize any of those sorts of I'm not exactly sure what you mean uh Senator by a demand bias but um any of the various sort of issue known issues that can creep in with surveys um uh are issues that are worked through very carefully um and very thoroughly yeah so the
um the ABS does a wastewater survey um and provides data in terms of nicotine consumption um and that has shown um an increase of 40% in the last eight years so do you have a view as to why the ABS report shows an increase in consumption whereas your report shows a decline in people smoking and the stabilizing in vaping rates.
Yeah so so Senator we're certainly um aware of that report and speak with our colleagues at the ABS I I think probably the easiest way to answer that is that different surveys measure different things. The ABS survey focuses on wastewater and and um amount of nicotine consumed uh whereas our surveys focused on uh in the particular statistic I think of interest is around whether people smoke daily and so it doesn't go to say the intensity of nicotine the number of cigarettes smoked all that sort of thing so so they are um different methodological approaches and they're they're measuring different things but I mean in terms of I'm just trying to think through in terms of the relevance
of the data um if somebody has one cigarette once as opposed to somebody who's smoking a packet a day that is pretty relevant if you're not collecting that data sort of almost begs the question of what's the point of your survey
I mean if we have this is a very important survey actually that gives us really significant information about the way that Australians are and are not using nicotine products and it is actually incredibly significant.
by the minister um it is a personal reflection I seek to undermine it for my question personal reasons. I've actually got a very serious line of questioning here and um I'm not I'm not going to ask for anything done now but just perhaps that we could have a look at the necessity of that personal reflection that is completely unsubstantiated maybe we could have a look at whether that's that is an appropriate way to be speaking back I have no personal
Senator Ruston I'll withdraw it but I think intrigued by this line of question.
No I'm just actually trying to understand why we've got two reports or two two um reports that have been written that have got very very different pieces of information and it it obviously nicotine consumption doesn't just occur by smoking and vaping there are other means of nicotine consumption but I'm sure that you would agree.
Yeah so um as Mr Beasley said the two um reports are based on completely different methodologies and measure different things. That's the that is an important statement effect. Clearly the National Drug Strategy Household survey is a survey it is based on self-reported information from Australians on their behaviors and their perceptions of use of tobacco alcohol and other drugs. The ABS analysis is a chemical analysis of wastewater and nicotine residues in wastewater. So clearly a completely different methodology. Beasley earlier our survey does actually include um information about not just daily smoking but lots more and since it is now publicly available I would recommend that you look at um some of those other specifics for example evidence from our survey shows that while the proportion of people using any form of nicotine in the past year has declined those people People may be using more nicotine on average than in previous years. People using e-cigarettes were more likely to use them daily in this survey than in the previous one. They are more likely to have used three or more forms of nicotine in the previous 12 months than in the last survey. Use of nicotine pouches and SNAS in particular has shown an increase in the previous survey that barely registered. And then we also had oral nicotine pouches, which feature in this survey at 1.8%, whether in 22-23, there was barely any use of that. So we do have data in this survey which actually is directionally aligned with ABS results which found more nicotine in the wastewater.