Statistics New Zealand

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) refers to the process of acquiring and applying the knowledge and skills needed to set and achieve positive goals, understand and manage emotions, feel and demonstrate empathy for others, and build and maintain positive relationships. I regularly integrate SEL activities that particularly focus on emotional awareness and regulation into my language lessons for adult learners in multicultural classrooms. My goal is to create a balanced learning environment that nurtures both academic growth and emotional intelligence. My presentation will summarize my ongoing SEL research in two continents. I will also display how an indigenous understanding of mindfulness, specifically Māori mindfulness, has been informing my research. Additionally, I will share insights and feedback from student surveys and interviews conducted at the conclusion of my new cycle of action research, which involves over 20 adult students in a B2 Academic English class. Through these findings, I aim to highlight the positive impact of SEL, as it supports not only language proficiency but also the interpersonal skills needed for success in academic and workplace settings.

Gynaecological cancers are an increasing concern in Aotearoa New Zealand, with rapid growth in uterine cancer incidence in recent years. Understanding future incidence patterns is essential for planning and service delivery at a sub-national level. Cancer registry data (2001-2022) were combined with population projections to estimate incidence of gynaecological cancers to 2045. Projections were generated using age-period-cohort Poisson regression models, with non-parametric bootstrapping to quantify uncertainty. Annual gynaecological cancer cases are projected to increase 82% by 2045, reaching 2,497 (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 2,263-2,774) compared with 1,375 in 2020-2022. The overall age-standardised rate is projected to rise 21% from 36.6 (95% confidence interval [CI] 35.5-37.8) to 44.2 per 100,000 (95% UI 38.9-50.3). Uterine cancer contributes the largest increase, more than doubling from 717 to 1,506 cases annually (110%). Among Māori, cases rise 132% from 214 to 497 per year (95% UI 449-553); for Pacific women, they rise 137% from 165 to 391 (95% UI 340-449). Uterine cancer age-standardised rates are projected to increase from 27.3 to 39.6 per 100,000 for Māori, and from 74.3 to 97.5 for Pacific women. Regional variation is expected: the Northern Region is projected to have the largest absolute increase (+506 cases, 527 to 1,033) and the largest percentage increase (96%). Gynaecological cancer incidence in Aotearoa New Zealand is projected to rise substantially over the next 20 years, driven by demographic change and increasing incidence of uterine cancer likely associated with risk factors such as excess body weight and diabetes. Findings highlight the need to prioritise prevention, proactive service planning and equity-focussed early detection.

Hospital discharge codes can be used to identify possible Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) following COVID-19 vaccinations. We sought to estimate the positive predictive value (PPV) and level of certainty of ICD-10-AM and SNOMED coding for meeting Brighton Collaboration case definitions of AESIs in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Our expert panel identified 24 ICD-10-AM codes and 2 SNOMED codes expected to identify 9 AESIs. We sought codes likely to be specific rather than sensitive. Medical record reviews were conducted by an experienced coder, adjudicated by medical specialists, for the level of certainty that each case met the target case definition. Admissions coded to an explicit alternative diagnosis were classified as Not a Case. Our data covered over 3 million people. Reviews were conducted on 761 medical records, randomly selected from admissions principally in calendar years 2016 to 2019. We report the PPV of each code with respect to its level of certainty of meeting the case definition. Only Guillain-Barré had a single code specific to a single AESI. Several neurological conditions had overlapping codes, conditions and case definitions. PPVs for individual codes to meet case definitions ranged from 11% to 100%. Level of certainty of each code and PPV are specified. PPVs of codes for each AESI need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Many codes are arguably insufficiently 'accurate' to identify a target AESI. We did not assess PPVs for combinations of codes. Our method did not allow us to estimate the number of cases missed by the coding.

Aotearoa New Zealand faces accelerating loss of freshwater fish biodiversity and growing pressures on culturally significant fisheries. Technical solutions alone have failed because the challenge is not only ecological, but also institutional, cultural, and relational. Change is needed across policy, research, and practice to drive better outcomes for freshwater fish, beginning with how science is conceived and undertaken. Drawing on the Fish Futures five‐year transdisciplinary research programme, we outline how a transformative research approach—focused on strengthening relationships between people and freshwater fish—responds to fragmented and justice‐deficient freshwater fish governance. We highlight where change is needed to better embed justice, holism, and coordination in freshwater fish science and governance. Through hui and knowledge co‐production processes grounded in Te Ao Māori, we articulate six values that guide how research is designed and enacted. Sustaining freshwater fish and fisheries will require more than just more science or better science—it demands transforming the way knowledge is produced, shared, and applied to enable governance that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) and reflects the deep interconnections between ecological and cultural wellbeing.

Seismic reflection profiling using shear waves provides constraints on the thickness of sediments beneath the Wellington Central Business District. Standard seismic methods were modified for urban environments where limited grassed areas are available and levels of cultural noise are high. Two‐way travel times on the stacked seismic section were converted to depth using a site‐specific velocity model based on direct velocity measurements from local downhole seismic surveys. Basement depths at Wellington Girls’ College and Waitangi Park are estimated to be 180 ± 19 and 166 ± 16 m, respectively. At Wellington Girls’ College, near‐surface sediments are horizontally layered, whereas at Waitangi Park, sediment layers are tilted in a zone of distributed, steep faulting. This fault zone is interpreted to be the onshore extension of the Aotea Fault that has been identified in Wellington Harbour on marine seismic reflection profiles. At Miramar Polo Ground, collocating a seismic survey with a logged borehole enabled us to benchmark our seismic interpretations against subsurface geology. Our new estimates of basement depth in the Wellington basin provide vital depth constraints for models that predict how shaking from earthquakes can vary across the city due to the basin's geometry.

This article analyses future projections of ocean properties for a region of the south‐west Pacific Ocean encompassing the New Zealand Exclusive Economic Zone under different climate change emission scenarios. Projections are updated and expanded from previous assessments using a “best” ensemble comprising both CMIP5 and CMIP6 earth system models. The updated projections show improved physical representations compared to previous projections based on CMIP5 models only. Contrary to the CMIP5 models alone, the new ensemble shows novel and distinct signatures associated with ocean circulation changes in the Bounty Trough that are consistent with recent observations. Previous results are extended to show how the reduced emission scenario SSP126 dampens future trajectories relative to the high emissions scenarios RCP8.5/SSP585 but does not return the end‐of‐century ocean state to that of the “present‐day” period [1976:2005]. Furthermore, analysis of archived output from three marine ecosystem models indicates that the south‐west Pacific Ocean total consumer biomass will reduce in the future, with reductions of 25%–51% by end‐of‐century under RCP8.5/SSP585 forcing. Overall, this article provides increased confidence of a substantially modified state of the southwest Pacific Ocean—physical, biogeochemical, and ecological—by end‐of‐century compared to present day.

This study aimed to determine the distribution of socioeconomic deprivation within the Māori and European populations in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1991, 2001, and 2023. NZDep is an index of relative socioeconomic deprivation for small areas based on data from the Census of Population and Dwellings. A socioeconomic deprivation score from 1 (least socioeconomically deprived 10% of small areas) to 10 (most socioeconomically deprived 10%) was assigned to the usually resident population of (1) Māori (defined as Total and Sole) and (2) European (defined as Sole and non‐Māori, non‐Pacific, non‐Asian (nMnPnA)), using the 1991, 2001 and 2023 versions of NZDep. The results showed that the proportion of total Māori living in the least socioeconomically deprived areas increased between 1991 and 2023 from 2.3% to 4.3%, and the proportion of Māori living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas decreased from 27.5% to 24.2%. However, the overall picture shows that Māori continue to live predominantly in areas of high relative socioeconomic deprivation compared with the sole European population. Despite over three decades of social and economic development, there has been minimal progress in addressing relative socioeconomic deprivation among Māori.

Scientific publishing is widely perceived to be in a state of crisis. A contributing factor is reproducibility: the extent to which the results can be replicated is key to assessing the reliability of a study. Reproducibility rates have often been found to be low, a situation complicated by the fact that many studies provide insufficient details of their methods. For the last decade, we have been using a framework that allows us to fully reproduce the results of analyses of fisheries data. Key features are that the analyses are fully defined in code and run within a consistent computing environment. The approach has proven to be transferable, with the framework being adopted in a range of other disciplines. Incentivising the broader adoption of fully reproducible analyses would assist in re-establishing trust in scientific publications, addressing the "reproducibility crisis" while also providing a basis for strengthened peer review processes and increasing the likelihood that questionable research practices are identified. Implementing fully reproducible analyses has some overhead, especially where the software tools that support the approach are unfamiliar. We have found that the benefits of openness, transparency, and efficiency, together with increased collaboration, make this overhead worthwhile.

Studying fine-scale movements of seabirds during migration is logistically challenging, but GPS technologies allow accurate tracking of individuals on their migratory journeys. Such data provide essential information in the context of offshore wind farm (OWF) developments, notably to anticipate spatial OWF overlap with migratory corridors and main foraging areas used along the routes of vulnerable species. Using high-precision GPS-GSM tags, we investigated the end of summer, southbound migration of two emblematic seabirds of French waters: Juvenile and adult Northern gannets Morus bassanus, and adult Balearic shearwaters Puffinus mauretanicus. Both species travel along the Southwestern European coast, between the Bay of Biscay and Western Africa, or the Mediterranean Sea. Adult gannets thereby migrate through the EEZ of up to 10 countries, six for juvenile gannet, and four for shearwaters. Combining behavioural segmentation based on hidden Markov models and utilization distribution modelling, we found that between two and 6 % of migration routes overlapped with proposed OWFs, with similar impacts on transit and foraging/resting areas. Studied seabirds were most at risk within Portuguese compared to Spanish waters, as they flew closest to OWFs (<10 km on average). While massive OWF developments are being planned within Western European coastal areas, our study suggests that offshore developments should be set >22 km away from the coast, to preserve transnational seabird migratory corridors. • Northern gannets and Balearic shearwaters rely on coastal areas along Southwestern European coasts during their southbound migration • There is currently limited overlap (2 to 6 %) between seabird migration routes and existing/planned offshore wind farms (OWFs) • Proposed OWFs are not intensively used by individuals during migration (up to 43 % less used than other locations along the sampled migratory route) • To minimize disturbance, OWFs should be constructed farther than 22 km away from Southwestern European coasts.