Understanding the results

The National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) is a large-scale survey that measures Australians’ understanding and attitudes regarding the complex issue of violence against women. Running every four years, the survey provides us with a snapshot in time of Australia’s progress in how well we understand violence against women as an issue; how much we support gender equality; and how strongly we condone or reject violence against women.  

The NCAS is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 (the National Plan 2022–2032). The NCAS provides a means of measuring progress against some of the key goals of the National Plan 2022–2032. The NCAS findings are consistent with the direction of the National Plan 2022–2032 and emphasise the importance of continuing action to prevent violence against women.  See “What are the NCAS findings used for?” for more information on policy work currently underway.

The NCAS is aligned with the actions outlined in the Change the Story framework produced by Our Watch. The NCAS complements the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey (PSS), which measures the prevalence of violence by asking people about their experiences of violence. 

The NCAS measures attitudes and understanding. It is designed to tell us how accurately Australians understand violence against women and how strongly Australians agree or disagree with a range of attitudes or opinions regarding violence against women and gender inequality at a particular point in time. In the NCAS, “understanding” refers to how accurately we recognise behaviours that constitute violence against women, and whether we recognise that domestic violence is gendered.

Attitudes – our beliefs and feelings towards something – are shaped by the world around us. Our individual attitudes are influenced by our families, friends and communities, and by our institutions: they reflect the norms that exist in schools, in the media, and in our policies and laws. 

Attitudes also help to create those social norms. How strongly we feel about a particular idea and the ways in which we understand (or misunderstand) an issue will influence social norms and community expectations about what is acceptable behaviour. 

Community-wide attitudes will impact on, for example, how well we respond to victims and survivors of violence against women, and how we think about and demand accountability from perpetrators. If our population believes that women “lie” about sexual assault, then this will likely be reflected in the way we treat women who disclose experiences of sexual violence. Mistrusting women’s experiences of violence as a community will impact how services and professionals respond to victims and survivors.

Given that attitudes and understanding play a role in shaping social norms, the NCAS functions as a gauge for how Australia is progressing in changing the broader climate that facilitates a culture of violence against women. By highlighting problematic areas in the community’s understanding and attitudes towards violence against women, the NCAS provides valuable evidence to inform policy and practice in the prevention of this violence.

The NCAS data can tell us about Australians’ attitudes at a specific point in time. It can tell us whether these attitudes have changed over time by comparing the 2021 results with the results from past years. Although the data can show changes over time, it cannot tell us why the changes have occurred.

Further research can be used to explore the factors underlying particular attitudes or beliefs. For example, the 2017 NCAS found high levels of community mistrust in women’s reports of sexual assault victimisation in some contexts. ANROWS conducted an additional qualitative research study, “Chuck her on a lie detector”: Investigating Australians’ mistrust in women’s reports of sexual assault, to develop an understanding of what drives these attitudes of mistrust.

The survey is made up of individual questions, referred to as “items”. These items are grouped into scales to measure a broad concept, such as understanding or attitudes regarding violence against women. Some of the scales are also subdivided into subscales which measure different aspects or themes within the broad concept.

All the scales and subscales work in the same direction, from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more “advanced” understanding or attitudes. As a society, we are aiming to change the broader climate that facilitates and maintains violence against women and are therefore aiming for higher scores across all the NCAS scales (see also “What are we aiming for?”). 

An overarching scale, the Gendered Violence and Inequality Scale (GVIS), is used to measure our overall progress regarding Australians’ understanding of violence and rejection of gendered violence and inequality.

• The Understanding of Violence against Women Scale (UVAWS) which measures whether Australians recognise certain behaviours as violence and how well they understand the gendered nature of violence. Higher scores on this scale indicate better understanding of the diverse forms of violence against women. An example of an item in the UVAWS is one that asks respondents whether harassment via repeated emails or text messages is a form of violence against women. 

• The Attitudes towards Gender Inequality Scale (AGIS) which tells us how strongly Australians reject gender inequality in its different forms. The higher the score, the stronger the rejection of gender inequality in different contexts. For example, one item in the AGIS asks whether respondents agree or disagree that men generally make more capable bosses than women. 

• The Attitudes towards Violence against Women Scale (AVAWS) measures how strongly respondents reject problematic attitudes regarding violence against women. The higher the score on the AVAWS, the stronger the rejection of incorrect myths, or problematic beliefs concerning violence against women. For example, one item in this scale asks whether respondents agree or disagree that a woman can make a man so angry that he hits her when he didn’t mean to.

Each of these three main scales is made up of subscales which provide detail and nuance on different aspects of understanding or attitudes. For example, the AVAWS has three subscales which measure our attitudes towards specific mindsets and myths about violence against women. One of these subscales is the Mistrust Women Subscale, which explores how strongly Australians reject the concept of mistrusting victims and survivors. One item in this subscale asks whether respondents believe that it is common for sexual assault accusations to be used as a way of getting back at men. 

Scores on the main scales were used to tell us where Australians’ understanding and attitudes sit on average. In addition, scores on each scale were categorised into two groups, one representing “advanced” understanding or attitudes and the other representing “developing” understanding or attitudes. For example, a respondent was categorised as having an “advanced” understanding of violence against women if they answered “yes, always” to at least 75 per cent of items that asked if a particular form of abuse counted as violence and “yes, usually” to the remaining items on that particular scale. Using this classification, we are able to identify how Australia is tracking against a nationwide goal that everyone holds “advanced” understanding and attitudes (see also “What are we aiming for?”).

As a society committed to ending violence against women, we are aiming for higher scores on all NCAS scales. This will show that, over time, Australians have improved in their understanding of violence against women, rejection of gender inequality, and rejection of violence against women in its various forms.

While average scores show us overall improvement, they do not tell the whole story. To end violence against women, we need most Australians to recognise all forms of violence, and to reject problematic myths and attitudes regarding gender inequality and violence against women. People look to those around them to see what is acceptable and normal, so until a visible majority object to problematic behaviour and attitudes, these behaviours and attitudes are likely to persist. So, our short- to medium-term goal is for most Australians to have “advanced” understanding and attitudes rejecting violence against women, and for this majority to be reflected at all levels of society from the smallest clubs and organisations to Australia as a whole. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Our long-term goal is for all Australians to reach “advanced” understanding of violence against women and rejection of problematic attitudes. 

“Advanced” is an aspirational level that we believe all Australians can and should achieve if we are to end violence against women. People were categorised as having “advanced” rejection of problematic attitudes if they scored above a certain point. This point was the minimum score that people got if they strongly disagreed with 75 per cent (3 in every 4) of problematic attitudes and somewhat disagreed with the remainder of the items in the scale. The process was similar for categorising “advanced” understanding except that people had to answer “yes, always” to at least 75 per cent of items that asked if a particular form of abuse counted as violence, and “yes, usually” to the remaining items on that scale.  

This wave of the NCAS also analysed the data by breaking it down by different types of violence. The 2021 NCAS analysed the data to investigate Australians’ attitudes regarding domestic violence, sexual violence (including both sexual assault and sexual harassment), and technology-facilitated abuse. This helps us to get a clearer picture of which types of violence are more strongly rejected by the community (for more, see Chapter 8 of the 2021 NCAS). 

As a long-running survey, it is important that each wave of the NCAS makes small changes to ensure that it continues to respond to emerging evidence and evolving social norms. 

The 2021 NCAS was the first large-scale survey with a representative sample to implement the 2020 ABS Standard for Sex, Gender, Variations of Sex Characteristics and Sexual Orientation Variables. This means the survey included demographic questions on sex recorded at birth, current gender identity, intersex status and sexuality. These additions allow for more inclusive reporting and, where possible, for non-binary respondents’ understanding and attitudes to be reported on separately. This change to the NCAS provides a unique addition to research on gender diversity and attitudes towards violence against women.

Additional items have also been added to the survey to allow for more detailed measurement of our understanding and attitudes about newer forms of violence, such as technology-facilitated abuse.

New items were introduced to examine Australians’ understanding of the way perpetrators of domestic violence can leverage forms of intersectional discrimination and marginalisation to exert control. For example, respondents were asked whether threatening to deport a partner on a visa, or threatening to put a partner with disability into a home, was domestic violence. (For more on this topic, see Section 1.2 of the 2021 NCAS).

New scales were developed and reported on in the 2021 NCAS. Specifically, the overarching GVIS (see “What do the scales and subscales used in the NCAS tell us?”) and new type of violence scales (see “Are there any other ways to look at NCAS data?”).

In 2021, a new way to measure national progress was introduced. Each wave of the NCAS can tell us about Australians’ average level of understanding and rejection of problematic attitudes at a point in time. However, these average scores on their own cannot tell us whether Australians have a high level of understanding or particularly progressive attitudes. For example, in 2021 Australians had an average score of 69 on the Understanding of Violence against Women Scale (UVAWS), up from 65 in 2017. This tells us Australians’ understanding of violence has improved but not whether their understanding is good. To respond to this gap, the 2021 NCAS classified respondents into one of two categories, as having either “advanced” or “developing” understanding and attitudes. This classification will allow us to see what proportion of Australians hold “advanced” understanding and attitudes and to track progress over time (see also “What are we aiming for?”).