Community Insights

If you are chosen from our random selection, you’ll receive an invitation to take part in a digital survey via email or letter with a unique code to your household.

Share your experience by completing our user-friendly digital survey.

Your input influences community policies, projects and services.

This round of the study asked questions about local activities and daily life in the City of Whittlesea. 

This round of the study asks questions about neighbourhood safety, connections and support within the community. It also seeks to understand residents' involvement in community activities and decision making.

This round of the study asks questions about quality of life, sense of place and belonging, disaster preparedness, personal support and knowledge of healthy lifestyle behaviours.

If you are looking to connect with others in your area, you can find a range of local community groups in our community directory.

Community safety

• 85% of respondents reported feeling safe or very safe in public areas during the day
• 37% reported feeling safe or very safe after dark
• 57% of women felt unsafe or very unsafe on public transport at night, compared to 42% of men.

Services accessed

• 96% of respondents reported accessing one or more health and community services in the previous 12 months
• the top five services accessed were GPs or doctors, allied health services, dentists, mental health services, and children’s health services
• 28% of respondents needed but did not access health and community services in the previous 12 months
• the top five services needed but not accessed were GPs or doctors, dentists, allied health services, mental health services, and financial support services.

Dietary habits

• 2% of respondents reported consuming at least five serves of vegetables daily
• 27% consumed at least two serves of fruit daily
• 17% consumed at least eight glasses of water daily. 

Respondents included dietary habits for children aged six months to 17 years old:

• 13% met recommended daily intake guidelines for vegetables
• 76% met recommended daily intake guidelines for fruit.

The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council recommends the following daily intakes:

• Fruit: 2 serves for adults; up to 2 serves for infants
• Vegetables: 5 serves for adults; 2-5 serves for infants
• Water: 8 glasses for adults.

Active living

• 46% of respondents met recommended physical activity guidelines of 2.5 hours a week of moderate to vigorous exercise
• the most common types of exercise were walking (86%), gardening (63%), and strength training (31%)
• 15% of respondents spent at least 8 hours a day sitting down
• 19% reported at least 8 hours of daily screen time, including computers, laptops, phones, or television.

Lifestyle choices

• 27% of respondents had never consumed alcohol, and a further 15% had not consumed alcohol in the past 12 months
• 6% said they consumed alcohol daily, up from 4% a year earlier
• of those who had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months, 9% said they consumed five or more drinks in one session
• 64% of respondents had never smoked cigarettes, 23% used to smoke, and 13% currently smoke
• 91% had never vaped, 2% used to vape, and 7% currently vape
• 46% had participated in at least one form of gambling
• the most common types of gambling were lotteries (40%), electronic gaming machines at a local venue (7%), and online sports betting (5%)
• of those who gambled, 4% reported one or more forms of gambling harm.

Participation in events and activities

• 67% of respondents reported attending a community event or activity in the past year
• the most common types of events and activities respondents wanted to see more of in their area were:
  • food festivals or markets
  • festivals or outdoor events
  • music events, gigs or concerts.

Financial pressure

• 54% of respondents were frequently or occasionally unable to participate in social and/or cultural activities due to cost
• 52% reported household members under the age of 18 being unable to participate in social and/or cultural activities due to cost.

Travel to work

• 14% of respondents reported a travel time of less than 15 minutes to get to work
• 78% travelled to work by car, 19% by public transport, 1% walked, and 2% used other methods.

Travel to school

• 26% of respondents who were studying reported a travel time of less than 15 minutes to get to their place of study
• 46% travelled to school by car, 44% by public transport, 7% walked, 2% cycled, and 1% used other methods
• 59% reported school drop-off or pick-up trips (kindergarten, primary and secondary) took less than 15 minutes
• 84% travelled by car, 1% walked, and less than 1% used public transport for school drop-off or pick-up trips. 

Local facilities

• 46% of respondents had visited a local library, up from 32% the previous year
• 83% had visited parks, gardens, trails and/or reserves, up from 78% the previous year
• 67% had visited sports and recreation facilities, up from 47% the previous year
• 98% had visited shopping and entertainment centres.

• 61% of respondents reported housing affordability as an issue in the City of Whittlesea
• 18% said there was not enough housing diversity, while 24% were unsure
• 13% reported occasionally or frequently being unable to meet mortgage or rent payments on time.

• 37% of employed respondents worked within the City of Whittlesea.

• 61% of respondents had completed a certificate to postgraduate degree, down from 80% the previous year
• 18% reported they were studying, either full-time or part-time, up from 8% the previous year.

• 77% of respondents did not have emergency plans prepared in the event of a natural disaster
• 87% had someone they could call for assistance for a non-life-threatening emergency
• in an emergency, 67% said they could access $2000 within two days by using their savings, borrowing money, or using a credit/bank card.

For local emergency information, visit the Emergency page.

• 47% of respondents felt they could have an impact in community decision-making, up from 42% the previous year
• 62% reported knowing they could provide feedback to Council, up from 46% the previous year
• 32% had participated in a decision-making activity with Council, down from 33% the previous year.

Residents are randomly selected from our database and invited to take part in the survey by mail or email. Residents may also receive an SMS notification about the survey.

Each invitation is a unique link to ensure the survey can be completed only once.

Some residents can also participate by clicking through from an online ad.

To take part, respondents must be 15 years or older and a current resident of the City of Whittlesea.

If you are selected to take part in the study, you will receive a letter or an email with detailed instructions on how to complete the survey. You will be requested to click a link in the email or scan a QR code and enter your unique number to access the digital survey.

If you have seen an ad for the survey, you can simply click through to complete the survey. 

The survey will take you approximately 12 minutes to complete. You will have three to four weeks to respond to the survey. 

Each survey has a different set of questions to help us learn about your experiences living in the City of Whittlesea. We are not looking for specific feedback about programs or polices in these surveys, instead we want to learn more from our community about changing trends over time.

Depending on the survey you receive, you may be asked about:

• local activities and daily life in the City of Whittlesea
• neighbourhood safety, connections, support and involvement within the community
• quality of life
• sense of belonging
• disaster preparedness
• knowledge of healthy lifestyle behaviours. 

The information you provide will be combined with responses from other members of the community to produce statistical data for the City of Whittlesea.

No, participation is voluntary. You can stop at any time without explanation or penalty. You are free to withdraw your responses from the study until data analysis has begun. During the data analysis stage, all responses will be de-identified and we will no longer be able to identify the responses provided by you. 

Your insights help make the community a better place to live, work and play. It is only through individual contributions that we can track how the community is changing over time. This helps us to know what to focus on now and in the future so that we can remain responsive to the needs of our residents. 

We recommend you complete the survey using a computer or a tablet. While you can do the survey on a mobile phone, the question layout may be a little more difficult to navigate.  

No, you don’t need to do the survey all in one go. As you go through the survey, your responses are saved automatically. This means you can come back and complete the survey later from where you left off.

The survey can be completed in the following languages: Arabic, Chinese - Simplified, Chinese - Traditional, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Persian, Punjabi, Sinhala, Vietnamese and Turkish. At the beginning of the survey, select your preferred language. To use the free interpreter service, call 131 450.

We publish a summary of our findings on our website for the community to view. The results will also be published in strategic reports that we are required to deliver to keep information transparent and accountable to the community and other government levels.  

The information you share will be combined with other respondents to produce statistical data for the municipality. During the data collection and reporting period (approximately four months), survey responses are stored on a secure server hosted by Australian Survey Research (ASR). Following this, the survey data is cleaned and de-identified before being moved to a database on the City of Whittlesea’s cloud server. 

You can access the information you provide by contacting us on 03 9217 2170.  You can only do this until it has been de-identified during the data analysis stage. At this time, we will no longer be able to identify the responses provided by you.

Your information is provided in accordance with the principles in the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 and our Privacy and Data Protection Policy. Information that identifies individual people or households is never published and your personal information will not be disclosed to any other organisation.

For more information about the Community Insights study or for assistance in completing the survey, please contact Customer Service on 03 9217 2170 and ask to speak to a member of the Research and Analytics department. If you have a complaint, you may call the same number. All complaints are treated confidentially.