Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

ASTHMA

Definition

This topic refers to persons ever told by a doctor or nurse that they have asthma, and whose asthma is current. Whether a person's asthma is current or not was determined by asking whether they still have asthma. They had to answer yes to this question for their asthma to be considered current.

Population

Information was obtained for all persons in the NHS.

Methodology

All respondents were asked whether they had ever been told by a doctor or nurse that they have asthma, and if so, whether symptoms were present, whether they had taken treatment in the last 12 months, and whether they still get asthma. Persons who answered yes to having symptoms of asthma or still getting asthma were then asked:

• whether their asthma had been worse or out of control in the last 12 months and the number of times they had gone to a hospital or emergency department as a result;
• whether they had a written action plan;
• whether they had been woken by asthma or wheezing in the last 4 weeks; and
• how often their asthma had interfered in daily activities in the last 4 weeks.

Respondents who reported having asthma were then sequenced to the Actions module in which they were asked questions about whether and how many times they had seen a GP, specialist, etc. in the last 12 months for their asthma.

Persons sequenced around the asthma questions may have reported having asthma in response to later general questions about health conditions. These persons are included in estimates of the prevalence of asthma, but information about written action plans, health professional consultations, hospital visits and days away from school, study or work due to asthma was not collected.

Respondents were asked in a later module about all medications and health supplements they were taking, but not in relation to any specific condition. This differs from the 2007-08 NHS in which questions about medications taken for asthma were asked within the asthma module. However, if the respondent reported taking asthma medication, they were then asked how often they took it.

Data items

The data items and related output categories for this topic will be available in Excel spreadsheet format from the Downloads page of this product.

Interpretation

Points to be considered in interpreting this topic include:

• almost all cases of asthma were persons who reported having been told by a doctor or nurse they had asthma, however, estimates may not agree with data from other sources using different approaches to the identification of asthma.

Comparability with 2007-08

Estimates of the number of people with asthma are considered to be directly comparable between 2007-08 and 2011-12.

Previous Page

Next Page