Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy: Data tables, 2017

The 2017 Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy (SIBS) is a joint initiative of Statistics Canada; Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; Global Affairs Canada; the Bank of Canada; the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; Institut de la statistique du Québec; and the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

This is the final release from the 2017 edition of SIBS. All data from the 2017 SIBS are available through the Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy, Concordance Table.

The 2017 SIBS is the first survey at Statistics Canada to use the Random Tabular Adjustment (RTA) technique, which aims to increase the amount of data made available to users, while protecting the confidentiality of respondents.

Statistics Canada typically uses suppression techniques to protect sensitive statistical information. These techniques involve suppressing data points that can directly or indirectly reveal information about a respondent. This can often lead to the suppression of a large number of data points and significantly reduce the amount of available data.

Using RTA, Statistics Canada can identify sensitive estimates and randomly adjust their value rather than suppress them. The size of the adjustment is calculated to protect respondent confidentiality. After adjusting the value, the agency assigns a quality measure (A, B, C, D, or E) to the estimate to indicate the degree of confidence that users can have in its accuracy. Quality measures account for uncertainty related to sampling, non-response and RTA, when applied.

For more information on RTA, please refer to the blog article, "Random Tabular Adjustment is here!," now available as part of the StatCan Blog.

Data from the 2009 and the 2012 SIBS are available through the Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy, Concordance Table.