Assaults
Local Government Areas (LGA)
Victorian incidents of assault during high, medium and low alcohol hours.
Definitions
Alcohol Hours
Alcohol involvement is not directly measured for some datasets, therefore an alternative surrogate measure of applying alcohol hours is used. There are two different sets of hours used, one for assaults and the other for serious road injuries.
Assaults:
| All areas | High alcohol hours (HAH) | Fridays or Saturdays 8pm-6am |
| Medium alcohol hours (MAH) | Sunday to Thursday 8pm-6am | |
| Low alcohol hours (LAH) | All days 6am – 8pm |
Methods
Scope
AODstats provides the ability to track trends of acute harms at the community level, and help inform policy and strategies to intervene and minimise the impact or spread of these harms.
This information provides a convenient, interactive, statistical resource for policy planners, drug service providers, health professionals and other key stakeholders, interested in the harms relating to alcohol and other drug use in Victoria.
Data Analysis
For further information on the analysis, please see the methods document (the document opens in a new tab).
- Data indicator: Assaults
- Data Source: Victoria Police Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) via Crime Statistics Agency
- Details of data analysis: The ‘alcohol’ flag in these data is deemed not reliable by Victoria Police, and therefore is not a viable option to determine alcohol involvement in assaults. As such, a surrogate measure for assaults occurring in high alcohol hours is used and involves using alcohol hours.
Alcohol hours were applied to assaults using time stamps to determine alcohol harms. Data presented is based upon residential location.
Metrics presented
- Numbers: cell sizes less than 5 are obfuscated in line with ethics and data custodian requirements. Some other categorical data may also be obfuscated if a category can be calculated by subtracting any remaining categories from the total.
- Rates: rates are crude rates, which can allow for adjustment of population sizes across different areas, however these do not adjust for certain demographic attributes (specifically age and sex). The advantage to using crude rates is particularly important from a policy perspective, to understand what is influencing the rates. For example, it is important for policy and services to be aware if an area has more men and younger people.
- Population estimates: ABS estimated resident population (ERP) on age, sex and statistical local areas is used throughout AODstats based on calendar year of data. For financial year datasets, the earliest year is used (e.g. 2012/13, 2012 ERP is used).
Limitations
There are limitations to using administrative data for purposes other than what it was originally intended when collected. This includes:
- Incomplete or missing data and inadequate coding.
- Location information is dependent upon dataset and the majority of times LGA is the smallest area provided, and sometimes only state based data is available.
- Crude rates are used, which do not allow for certain demographic attributes (age and gender) to be compared accurately across areas, and also rates based on small numbers can produce unstable results.