Most children living in the Satterley Property Group’s Brighton Estate play either netball or football.

Structured sports polled the highest in a survey conducted for the Satterley Property Group at its recent Unite Youth event at Brighton Estate in Butler.

It shows that children living in the area are happy playing for local clubs.

The survey has given a social picture of youth in Perth’s northern suburbs.

Satterley Property Group Community Development Co-ordinator Ben Hogarth organised the survey to gauge the interest young people had in outdoor public events like the Unite Youth program.

He was surprised to find that more than a third of the 800 young people who attended the Unite Youth event came from outside the award-winning Brighton Estate.

The largest age group at the event was 10-12 year olds, almost double the next age group of 13 to 15 years. The next highest age group was the 6 to 9 year olds with the smallest number aged 16 or 17.

The survey shows that most competitors playing structured sport are involved in netball, closely followed by Australian football. Martial arts and soccer were equally popular then there was a sharp drop away to golf, acrobatics, Oz tag and trampolining.

Structured sport was easily the most popular activity for participants followed by ‘talking to friends’, using the skate park or just playing. The next most popular were dancing, listening to music or going to a youth club or church group.

A range of other interests polled poorly, including watching tv, doing homework,  or going to a shopping mall. Only a small number of youth answered ‘nothing’ when asked what they did after school.

The biggest outcome of the survey for Ben and his team was to receive a big thumbs up by young people living on the estate.

There was a strong call by the young attendees for more family-type community events.

Another pleasing aspect of the survey was that more than 90 per cent of young people said they wanted to be kept informed and sought information on local youth groups and activities.