If you live in Australia and you're aged 50 years and over, this is your invitation to participate in the National Seniors Social Survey (NSSS).
National Seniors Australia's mission is to advocate for older Australians' wellbeing and quality of life. But that's only possible if we know what you experience, think, and feel about your lives and your place in society.
The annual NSSS gathers this kind of information from thousands of older people every year, on a range of important topics.
We feed the results into our advocacy campaigns, government submissions, and pragmatic proposals for social change.
If more people from different backgrounds complete the NSSS, we get a better sense of the needs and opinions out there.
Each year, we cover different topics in the NSSS so our organisation can speak to diverse issues that affect older people.
This year's survey includes modules on:
Healthy ageing
Connections with people, animals, and places
Ageism
Dementia
Financial wellbeing and planning, including questions about inheritances
Advocacy questions, this time focusing on private health insurance, COVID measures, and vaccination.
In all these topics we're interested in what you know, think, feel, and need.
The NSSS is:
CONFIDENTIAL. Your answers will be completely confidential. No information will be made available that would identify you in any way.
ETHICS APPROVED. The Bellberry Human Research Ethics Committee has reviewed and approved the survey in accordance with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) - incorporating all updates. This statement has been developed to protect the interests of people who agree to participate in research studies.
We want to hear your views, and what you'd like to see change for older Australians as you move through later life.
So come and participate in the 2024 National Seniors Social Survey today. The survey is open from 8-22 February 2024.
Find it HERE.
You can find out more about the National Seniors Social Survey in general on the National Seniors website.
There we discuss our ethical procedures, how we treat and store your data, and how we decide which topics to include in each year's survey.
As an example of past surveys, the 2023 NSSS focused on the rising cost of living and associated problems.
We published four major research reports from the results, available on our Research Reports webpage. The reports looked at:
Financial wellbeing and the cost of living, a statistical study of which groups of older people are most concerned about rising costs, and factors that can offset such worries.
Older people's responses to the rising cost of living, exploring the personal impacts of rising costs and older people's everyday strategies for managing them.
Healthcare affordability and accessibility in Australia, including healthcare older people have missed out on because of costs.
Suitable housing in later life, including housing affordability issues for older people, and obstacles to moving house at older ages. As well as this focus on the cost of living, we asked survey respondents about their experiences with home-based aged care. We presented a report on this topic to the Interim Inspector General of Aged Care in early 2023, which fed into his assessment of the implementation of Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommendations.
We also asked people for their views on National Seniors' green bonds proposal. The survey results on this will feed into the Federal Government's commitment to introduce green bonds in 2024.
And we translated our research results into infographics and articles to make them more widely available and accessible to all. Our 2023 work made media splashes across the nation and even the world, being referenced by news outlets ranging from the Glasshouse Country & Maleny News to the ABC to the Wall Street Journal.
The National Seniors Research Reports page archives all our research reports, going back to 2008. All reports are freely available to download so their impact can continue into the future.
Do you want your voice included in that archive for future Australians to read about?
If so, click HERE to complete the 2024 National Seniors Social Survey today.
