Mapping the hot spots and cold spots across our civic life journey: data shows ways to improve access to civic engagement and participation
Democracy Data Update 3
“How does civic engagement shift across Australians’ lives from school civic education to the first time we vote, to showing up at a council meeting to our first time expressing a political opinion, and where are the “hot” and “cold” spots in access to these meaningful opportunities?”
Australian Resilient Democracy Network (2026) ‘Mapping the civic life journey: summary of 2025 cross-sector data and policy hackathon’ Australian Resilient Democracy Network Report.
At a glance
Australia’s civic participation is declining, according to our current survey measurement tools. Volunteering rates are down, engagement in public forums and consultations is inconsistent, and membership rates in organisations are lower than a decade ago. But we don’t monitor these patterns or disentangle practical insights on when and where people prefer to engage, what access they have to opportunities, what barriers they face, and when civic engagement is most meaningful.
To begin addressing these gaps, the Australian Resilient Democracy Network (ARDN) convened 30 data and policy experts around the concept of the civic life journey in a hackathon. The civic life journey concept views the progression of an individual’s relationship with society through different stages of civic life. We sought to develop practical insights on when and where people prefer to engage, what access they have to opportunities, what barriers they face, and when civic engagement is most meaningful.
Key insights and recommendations for data
Australia’s data landscape for civic engagement is fragmented and skewed towards youth. Across 15 datasets identified, no single one tracks civic engagement comprehensively across the life course. Hot spots for data include youth and volunteering. Cold spots include adults (especially elderly cohorts), digital civic engagement, civic education, multicultural and diverse communities, and ‘invisible’ civic engagement.
Causal pathway analysis of LSAC and ATP datasets produced promising findings for further investigation. This includes school belonging and friendship strength as strong predictors of later civic engagement; that the transition from school to adulthood is both the highest risk and highest opportunity civic moment; and that loneliness in early life at transition points such as leaving school risks later civic disengagement and lower trust.
Australia’s data landscape for civic engagement can be improved through greater connectivity between datasets, more focus on evaluation, greater coverage of underrepresented cohorts, and a more explicit focus on civic activities in datasets. More targeted data collection practices and use of analytical techniques such as Bayesian networks, Directed Acyclic Graphs, and decision tree methods also hold promise.
Key recommendations for civic engagement programs
Design civic engagement around key transition points – especially ages 16–24. Prioritise programs that meet young people where major first-time civic interactions occur (leaving school; entering work/TAFE/university; first independent dealings with services; first vote), including pathways from school-based councils and youth parliaments into ongoing local, state and national participation options. Digital engagement should be considered here too.
Move beyond a youth-only focus by creating purpose-built opportunities for mid-life and later-life stages. Address the post-mid-20s ‘flatness’ of engagement offerings by developing age- and life-stage relevant pathways (e.g., for people balancing work and caring responsibilities, people relocating, people experiencing unemployment, and people transitioning into retirement), rather than relying on generic, opt-in models.
Broaden reach by combining ‘explicit’ civic programs with ‘incidental’ everyday settings, and by offering both voluntary and low-friction pathways. Embed civic learning and participation into places people already are (workplaces, schools (and their Parents & Citizens Associations – P&Cs or Parents & Friends Associations – P&Fs), community groups, service touchpoints), and offer multiple modes of participation (digital and in-person; short and sustained; advisory and deliberative) to reduce barriers for time- and resource-constrained communities. This is especially important for communities that face structural disadvantages.
Conceptual foundation: ‘the civic life journey’
The ‘civic life journey’ framing for understanding civic engagement over Australians’ life courses was originally proposed in Andrew Mycock and Brenton Prosser’s ARDN Discussion Paper.
The civic life journey concept views the progression of an individual’s relationship with society through different stages of civic life. Whilst key stages of the journey are defined by age, they can also be differentiated across other factors and life experiences – such as where people live, experiences of disability or different cultural backgrounds.
The civic life course approach includes analysis of transition points in individual’s life course, such as from school into workforce or out of workforce. It also seeks to disaggregate preferences for when, how and where to engage. It seeks to use this analysis and framing to target programs and support to increase access to opportunities across each of the life course stages.
This Figure above presents a simplified model of the civic life course. It outlines three interacting elements of the civic life journey: civic literacy (knowledge and skills for democratic participation), civic participation (actions and behaviours that contribute to public life), and civic connection (belonging, agency, cohesion and responsibility developed through engagement).
We know from national surveys that meaningful civic engagement and education are protective factors against the declining trust in institutions and growing polarisation that liberal democracies including Australia are experiencing (see APSC Civic Education and Democratic Perceptions). While young people report sharply lower senses of belonging and Australia’s national standardised NAPLAN Civics and Citizenship exams show declining understanding of how our government works, more than half of Australians report feeling their voices are not heard in key public decisions.
But we don’t monitor these patterns or disentangle practical insights on when and where people prefer to engage, what access they have to opportunities, what barriers they face, and when civic engagement is most meaningful. Surveys suggest those who are active in their communities report higher trust and satisfaction with our democratic systems.
About the hackathon
In late 2025, the Australian Resilient Democracy Network (ARDN) co-hosted a collaborative hackathon with 30 data analysts and custodians, policy experts and program designers from academia, civil society and different levels of government to test the ‘civic life journey’ concept.
The hackathon was designed to map what we know in our current information and measurement systems. Participants used the framework to map civic experiences and transitions across all life stages, including both formal and informal engagements.
We began by checking what variables and dimensions exist across national surveys, administrative records of participation in activities, and records of organisational membership or attendance. The goal was not to integrate data, but to map the landscape, and connect what official statistics from government, community organisations, and public services currently know – and what might be possible.
Data landscape findings
Overall, there is no comprehensive linked data analysis of the civic life journey in Australia. The current data ecosystem has strong clusters of thematic data coverage, often collected by longitudinal studies, each of which covers different stages of the life course or dimensions of civic engagement.
Note: Findings presented here should be understood as preliminary and exploratory – not conclusive or comprehensive – given the limited scope of the hackathon to conduct extensive and rigorous analysis.
The hackathon identified 15 datasets currently suitable for an initial meta-analysis of civic engagement data. These are listed below and used for analysis in the subsequent charts:
Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in Aus (OECD), OECD Data Explorer
The following eight datasets listed below have some of the most specific indicators and potential for analysing a civic life journey, either currently or in the future. This is because they either cover a broad range of civic engagement components or contain rich administrative data.
What predicts positive (and negative) outcomes for individuals’ civic life journeys?
Initial analysis of longitudinal and administrative data using Bayesian networks, Directed Acyclic Graphs, and decision tree methods during the hackathon produced some promising findings about the causal pathways between early-life experiences and later civic engagement.
Preliminary findings from analysis of ATP and LSAC produced three findings, each requiring further investigation:
School belonging and friendship strength are strong predictors of later civic engagement identified in the analysis using Bayesian network and decision tree methods (exploratory only).
The school-to-adulthood transition is both the highest-risk and highest-opportunity civic moment.
Early-life loneliness at key transition points – such as leaving school, unemployment, relocation, and retirement – create pathways that risk civic disengagement and declining trust.
Mapping ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spots of data coverage
Mycock and Prosser found that civic education, volunteering, and other civic activities often target specific life stages – but overlook the need for continuity between them. In particular, key transition points in people’s lives (e.g., entering the workforce, gaining citizenship, or moving to a new community) or missed opportunities to design programs which encourage ongoing engagement and connection. Similarly, different points in our life reflect different priorities and pressures, often resulting in either ‘hot spots’ of high levels of engagement or ‘cold spots’ when people disconnect.
Hot spot: Youth
There is a clear concentration of data sources for younger cohorts. The Longitudinal Surveys for Australian Youth, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, the Australian Youth Barometer, and the Mission Australia Youth Survey – combined with the natural overlapping of the more general-purpose nationwide datasets – results in the relatively high coverage of data on civic engagement for this cohort.
Cold spot: Adult cohorts – especially the elderly
While elderly adult cohorts are ostensibly well represented in the data ecosystem due to their inclusion in age generic studies and surveys such as the ABS General Social Survey and Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset, there was no specific dataset identified that focused on civic engagement for these cohorts.
Leaving the workforce, bereavement, and the declining health that comes with old age are all key points of transition in a civic life journey. These later stages of life represent points of high risk for disengagement.
Hot spot: Volunteering
Volunteering emerged as the most well measured sub-element across the datasets. Volunteering Australia has large data holdings in this area with the Australian Temperament Project and Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia also capturing volunteering. The focus on volunteering was corroborated by the repeated use of volunteering hours as a response variable for different methods of quantitative analysis into civic engagement.
Cold spot: Digital civic engagement and civic education
Digital civic engagement and civic education emerged as the two most undermeasured elements of civic engagement in the data ecosystem. Evidence suggests that civic education is a driver for civic engagement later in life while digital civic engagement is becoming increasingly significant as a means of contributing to community.
Cold spot: Multicultural and diverse communities
Multicultural and diverse communities are not necessarily being reflected in the data, including what we define as civic engagement and the informal ways communities organise and support each other. It is not clear whether civic life journeys can be aggregated up from individual level data, especially across different demographics. Careful consideration should be taken when trying to understand the civic life journeys of different cultural groups.
Cold spot: Invisible civic engagement
Invisible forms of civic engagement are often informal and community-based actions that take place outside of formal political or organisational structures. This might range from family and neighbourhood activities to different forms of political expression such as ethical consuming, creative resistance, and online ‘clicktivism’. These are hard to capture with traditional data collection methods.
Mapping current programs and civic engagement opportunities
Gaps in current community programs and public services
No coordinated life-course design, with most programs focused on the 16-25 age bracket. After individuals transition from school to the workforce, civic engagement opportunities begin to become generic for all adult life stages.
Limited reach to diverse or resource-constrained populations.
No systematic evidence of cumulative impact.
Geographic analysis (see Rouven Link on ‘Mapping Access to Civic Participation Opportunities’) shows civic infrastructure is heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas, with pronounced gaps ‘civic deserts’ in many rural and remote communities.
The table below summarising some of the key program areas. This is not an exhaustive list, and therefore, should only be seen as a high-level prompt.
Examples of current programs
Several examples of civic engagement programs were mentioned throughout the hackathon:
Recommendations moving forward
Aligning research and policy or program recommendations is important given that the former informs the latter. Research in priority domains (e.g., older adults, diverse communities, online participation) can help create the evidence base for programs in these areas.
Policy & programs: civic engagement opportunities across the life journey
There is no coordinated life-course design for civic engagement in Australia, suggesting the need for more conceptually coherent and practically joined-up approaches.
Policy and program opportunities
Target loneliness hotspots at life transition points such as school exit, workforce entry and exit, relocation, and retirement before disengagement takes hold.
Extend program focus beyond youth. There is limited focus on civic engagement programs for adults aged 25–55 or 65+, despite lower democratic satisfaction in older cohorts.
Redesign incidental civic activity such as workplaces, school P&Cs, and community groups to embed deliberate civic learning rather than relying on explicit opt-in programs that reach a narrow slice of the population.
Use geographic intelligence to target investment in civic deserts and inform place-based programs such as Stronger Places, Stronger People.
Run evaluations across a variety of community programs to assess impacts.
Civic engagement opportunities beyond voluntary and youth-focused programs
The ARDN will work with partners to assess different models, programs and approaches which provide access to engagement and participation opportunities at key life transition points, including programs that meet young people where major first-time civic interactions occur (leaving school; entering work/TAFE/university; first independent dealings with services; first time vote).
Make formal government consultations more attractive and accessible
There are many formal consultation processes for public inquiries and other matters of policy change or law reform that happen at the local, state and federal levels. However, such processes are not always accessible (in terms of being known about or navigable) or attractive to some individuals or groups. A forthcoming OECD Report on Strengthening Civic Spaces helps address these gaps. Further work by ARDN will focus on process and platforms for more meaningful engagement.
Evaluating civic engagement programs
The limitations of the hackathon meant that evaluations of civic engagement programs were not examined. However, participants suggest the need for co-developing a shared evaluation approach and set of measurement goals. A forthcoming OECD Country report will provide initial insights into comparative approaches.
Data and Analysis: civic engagement opportunities across the life journey
Where to focus future analysis and data:
Connections: Linking longitudinal data analysis with administrative data.
Evaluation: Evidence of program impact and digital civic engagement is almost entirely unmeasured across existing studies.
Structural: Administrative data on program participation, membership and service engagement is not consolidated or accessible
Coverage: Elderly cohorts lack a dedicated data source despite containing key transition points.
Priority: ATP and PLIDA (Person Level Integrated Data Asset) have not yet been thoroughly applied to civic engagement questions. This represents a strong opportunity for civic life journey analysis.
Sharpen data collection across the civic life journey: ages, engagement types
This includes advancing new questions and indicators for when, how and where people of all ages are engaging in civic life, from formal to informal spaces, both in-person and online. It also includes ensuring measures of non-youth cohorts and additional variables are included in administrative data.
There also needs to be greater consideration of how the civic life journey may differ for people from diverse and multicultural backgrounds. The current civic life journey framework and data landscape does not necessarily cater to this heterogeneity. A formal research program that scopes the diversity of civic engagement could inform measurement, data collection, program evaluation and policy.
New analytic methodological approaches to map causal pathways and differentiate community needs
Existing longitudinal and administrative data already contains more analytical potential than has been realised. The hackathon demonstrated that Bayesian networks, Directed Acyclic Graphs, and decision tree methods can illuminate causal pathways between early-life experiences and later civic engagement. This analysis could now be pursued more rigorously, with the full data sets, specifically the Australian Temperament Project and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, and a wider range of variables, particularly now that computational algorithms underpinning machine learning is possible with new computing capacity.
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