Find community-level data

Defining community-level data

Community-level data is information small enough in scale to be relevant to a community. It can take many forms, depending on the community and the stories you want to tell.

Australian Government data exists at many geographic levels. National-level is the highest geographic level for Australia. Sitting directly below this is the state/territory level. Data will often need to be at a much lower level than this to be relevant to a community. The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) defines boundaries so that data can be presented at a level that is most relevant to a user.

This toolkit mainly uses the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS)(Opens in a new tab/window). Most data in this toolkit is presented at the Statistical Area 2 (SA2) level.

SA2 is a useful geographic level for community-level data because it captures population levels from 3,000-25,000 people. This is considered a good approximation of ‘community-level’ data, but it is important to note SA2 level data has limitations, including that it often does not accurately represent Indigenous geography.

In some situations, larger geographic areas may provide useful information. For this reason, this toolkit includes data at:

• Statistical Area 3 (SA3)
• Statistical Area 4 (SA4)
• Local Government Areas (LGAs)
• ABS defined Indigenous Areas (IAREs).

Visit the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website for an interactive map of the ASGS information(Opens in a new tab/window) to understand the ABS Statistical Area structures in 2021(Opens in a new tab/window) in more detail. 

Where appropriate, data categorised at other unique geographies are included in the toolkit as well. This includes geographies such as Primary Health Networks (PHNs) and Local Government Areas (LGAs). Learn more about the meanings of these terms at the Glossary of data terms.