Design and methods of the Third Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR3): a nationally representative sexual and reproductive health survey.

Authors

Denton Callander, Hamish McManus, Erin Ogilvie, Deborah Bateson, Christopher Fisher, Praveena Gunaratnam, Andrew Grulich, Mo Hammoud, Wendy Heywood, Jane S Hocking, Christopher Rissel, Cathy Vaughan, Richard O de Visser, Anna Yeung, Allison Carter, Rebecca Guy

Published in

Sexual health. Volume 23. Issue 4. Aug 17, 2026.

Abstract

Significant social, technological and medical changes highlight a need for timely and representative sexual and reproductive health surveys, while also posing challenges to their design. This paper describes methods of the Third Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR3).
From March 2023 to April 2024, data were collected from people aged 16-69 years via an anonymous survey of holistic sexual and reproductive health. ASHR3 collected data via random selection of mobile phone numbers for an interviewer-administered survey and via an online probability panel for a self-administered digital survey. Potential differences between the two modes of sampling and data collection were investigated. Sample-specific design weights were applied and calibrated to the 2021 Australian Census regarding gender, country of birth, education, religion and area of residence.
The final sample was 12,833 people: 5693 men (48.63% weighted proportion), 6984 women (49.98%), and 156 non-binary people (1.39%) from every state and territory. Telephone interviews were conducted with 7226 participants and online surveys with 5607. The survey cooperation and response rates for the telephone sample were 86.11% and 3.54%, respectively, whereas the online completion rate was 98.73%. Few participants said the survey made them feel embarrassed (10.96%) and most said they were very honest in their responses (96.54%). Comparisons with the most recent Census found the weighted ASHR3 sample was generally representative of the general population of Australia, with a mean of 1.22% difference across key sociodemographic characteristics (s.d. 2.37). There were no differences observed in sociodemographic characteristics and other responses between the telephone and online samples.
ASHR3 compiled rich, robust, and representative data on sexual and reproductive health from a large national sample. The inclusion of an online probability panel complemented the more traditional telephone-based methods. With more than 20 years of data, ASHR is an important resource for monitoring trends in sexual and reproductive health.

PMID:
42331603
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 23 Jun 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.