Our landmark Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll study of young people’s risk behaviours started in 2005 at Melbourne’s Big Day Out (an annual music festival). For more than a decade, Burnet’s researchers undertook the yearly survey at the festival. Since 2015, the Sex, Drugs, and Rock‘n’Roll surveys have been completed online.

We have surveyed over 16,000 young people aged between 15 and 29 years about sexual behaviours, alcohol and other drug use, pornography use, social media and mental health. We have learnt a great deal about the types and prevalence of risk behaviours among young people from these surveys, and can monitor changes in these over time.

The Big Day Out festival also gave us an excellent opportunity to inform this population group about sexual health and behaviour that may place them at risk of sexually transmitted infections. Showbags containing safer sex and other harm reduction information were distributed to survey participants and other Big Day Out patrons.

The Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll surveys have also been used as a platform for other studies. In 2006, the survey was used to recruit people to a trial of SMS and email messages as an intervention to reduce STI risk behaviours and increase STI testing.

In 2008, the survey was used as a baseline measure in a study to promote sexual health by SMS to young people. The Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll surveys have also provided an opportunity to evaluate health promotion campaigns and policies, such as the Victorian Government’s “You Never Know Who You’ll Meet” campaign, the “Ice Destroys Lives” campaign and Australian alcohol guidelines.

View results from the 2022 survey

To see results from previous Big Day Out studies, click on the links on the right: