It is widely reported that medical practitioners who grew up in rural areas are more likely to return there to practice and many assumptions have been made based on this belief. These assumptions have impacted on policy decisions and resulted in several major initiatives aimed at increasing the number of General Practitioners (GPs) working in rural and remote areas. This project is a national case-control study, in the form of a mail survey, using a self-administered questionnaire to investigate these assumptions and inform national policy. The cases were randomly selected current rural general practitioners (GPs) in each state and the Northern Territory in Australia. The controls were randomly selected current urban GPs in each state and the Northern Territory (the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) was excluded as this territory does not contain both cases and controls). Rural Background Study questionnaires were sent to 4513 rural and urban GPs in each state and the Northern Territory. Of the GPs surveyed 71.2% returned a completed questionnaire. At the time of abstract submission this study was in the analysis stage and major results were not available. Results on the association between rural background of the GPs, their spouse/partners and practice location will be presented for each state and the Northern Territory as they pertain to the urban and rural cohorts. Data relating to other factors that influence the decision to take up rural practice, such as exposure to rural practice during training, location of primary and secondary education, and spousal/partner origin will also be presented.