Disparities in reported psychosocial assessment across public and private maternity settings: a national survey of women in Australia

Table 1 Socio-demographic characteristics of study participants, mothers of the same age in the general population in Australia, and ALSWH main survey 5 participants (1973–1978 cohort)

Characteristic	Study participants	General population	ALSWH
Characteristic			1973-1978 Cohort*
	%	%	%
Partner status ^§
Married/de facto	96.2	91.8	77.4
Single/separated/divorced/widowed	3.4	6.4	22.6
Missing/not stated	0.4	1.8	0.4
Parity ^§
Primiparous	21.9	30.7	30.6
Multiparous	78.1	69.2	69.4
Missing/not stated	-	0.1	-
Income management
Not difficult	58.8		59.4
Difficult	40.7	n.a.	40.1
Missing/not stated	0.4		0.4
Highest level of education ^#
University degree	59.6	23.5	50.8
Yr 12/Trade/ diploma	35.4	49.7	39.6
Year 10 or below	4.3	20.5	7.4
Missing/not stated	0.6	6.3	2.2
Area of residence ^#
Urban¹	58.3	68.2	54.6
Non-urban²	41.2	31.8	41.2
Missing/not stated	0.5	0.1	4.2
Background language ^#
English	93.6	75.6	92.8
Non-English speaking	5.7	24.1	6.2
Missing/not stated	0.8	0.3	1.0
Employment status ^#
Employed	70.7	59.7	77.3
Not employed	28.8	39.5	22.7
Missing/not stated	0.5	0.8
Hospital sector (index child) ^§
Private	53.5	41.4
Public³	43.6	57.8	n.a.
Other	1.7	0.9
Missing/not stated	1.2	-

Source of general population comparison data: ^§AIHW (unpublished) 2008 National Perinatal Data Collection; ^#ABS, Customised Report, 2012 (2006/2011 Census data); *ALSWH 1973–1978 Cohort at Survey 5 (2009, N = 8, 200, from which the sampling frame for this study was drawn) except Background Language which was assessed at Survey 1 (1996); ¹Major cities; ²Inner/outer regional & remote/very remote; ³Includes birthing centres; n.a: not available.

ISSN: 1471-2458