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Researchers and policy makers often use data from nationally representative probability sample surveys. The number of topics covered by such surveys, and hence the amount of interviewing time involved, have typically increased over the years, resulting in increased costs and respondent burden. A potential solution to this problem is to carefully form subsets of the items in a survey and administer one such subset to each respondent. Designs of this type are called "split-questionnaire" designs or "matrix sampling" designs. The administration of only a subset of the survey items to each respondent in a matrix sampling design creates what can be considered missing data. Multiple imputation (Rubin 1987), a general-purpose approach developed for handling data with missing values, is appealing for the analysis of data from a matrix sample, because once the multiple imputations are created, data analysts can apply standard methods for analyzing complete data from a sample survey. This paper develops and evaluates a method for creating matrix sampling forms, each form containing a subset of items to be administered to randomly selected respondents. The method can be applied in complex settings, including situations in which skip patterns are present. Forms are created in such a way that each form includes items that are predictive of the excluded items, so that subsequent analyses based on multiple imputation can recover some of the information about the excluded items that would have been collected had there been no matrix sampling. The matrix sampling and multiple-imputation methods are evaluated using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, one of many nationally representative probability sample surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study demonstrates the feasibility of the approach applied to a major national health survey with complex structure, and it provides practical advice about appropriate items to include in matrix sampling designs in future surveys.

In this Issue is a column where the Editor biefly presents each paper of the current issue of Survey Methodology. As well, it sometimes contain informations on structure or management changes in the journal.

To provide users with a complete picture of the activities associated with the Couriers and Local Messengers industry in Canada.

From 1995 to 2004, the proportion of women and men aged 25 to 54 in the labour force grew steadily. However, from 2004 into the first half of 2006, both women's and men's participation rates declined very slightly yet persistently. Is this the beginning of a new trend or does it merely reflect regular fluctuations in the economy? Particular attention is focused on women with young children.

Using tax data, this paper examines earnings instability among lone parents, unattached individuals, and two-parent families over the past two decades. When income tax effects and main sources of income were considered, no strong evidence of a widespread increase in instability was found. Government transfers play a particularly important role in reducing the earnings instability of lone mothers and unattached individuals

Rapid technological change and an increased emphasis on skill-based knowledge have led to an increased need for training entry-level workers and retraining older ones. How do the training rates of workers aged 25 to 34 compare with those aged 55 to 64? Personal and job-related characteristics are examined for training participants, as are employer support, self-directed learning, barriers faced, and objectives and outcomes of training.

A household's ability to afford housing has traditionally been measured using income information derived from the census. A household spending 30% or more of its income on shelter was considered to have a shelter-cost burden. The Survey of Household Spending provides an alternative denominator based on total household spending.

Just as the responsibility of raising children is lifting, many families are facing a new challenge providing care to aging parents, relatives or friends. The intensity of work and eldercare can affect the work life balance of the caregiver. An examination of the prevalence and impact of caregiving among those aged 45 to 64, looking at the hours spent on both paid work and informal care of seniors.

This monograph focuses on the differences in performance on the IALSS tests between people whose mother tongue is French and those whose mother tongue is English in Canada, particularly those living in a minority situation. Various factors are examined with the goal of explaining these differences. Schooling, age, reading and writing habits of everyday life, as well as the living environment explains a large part of the differences between linguistic groups.

This article uses data from the 2001 General Social Survey to examine patterns in leaving the parental home. It compares the transition process for five birth cohorts,with the focus on Wave 1 Boomers (born between 1947 and 1956) and their children in Generation X (born between 1967 and 1976). The differences in patterns of leaving the parental home are examined, and then the principal factors associated with a young person's initial launch into adulthood are identified.

To provide users with a complete picture of the activities associated with the Couriers and Local Messengers industry in Canada.

This bulletin presents the final set of tables which contain salary information for the year 2004-2005. This information is collected annually under the University and College Academic Staff System and has a reference date of October 1st. Therefore, the data reflect employment in universities as of that date. Each university must authorize Statistics Canada to release their information. However, information for institutions that have less than 100 full-time staff are not included.

The statistics presented in this bulletin are for the year ending on August 31 and for the period from 2002 to 2005. The following text contains references to previous periods when it is useful to set the industry's performance in a historical context.

To provide users with a complete picture of the financial and operational activities associated with Small For-hire Motor Carriers of Freight and Owner Operators in Canada.

Although revenues were higher in 2004 compared to 2003, the Canadian bus and urban transit industries had a difficult year in 2004. Their net income dropped nearly 17% as expenses rose faster than revenues.

This publication is a statistical summary of the dairy situation in Canada and the provinces, including farm sales of milk for fluid and manufacturing purposes; cash receipts from farm sales; and production and stocks of creamery butter, cheddar cheese and other dairy products and by-products.

The statistics presented in this Bulletin are for the fiscal year ending August 31 and cover the period from 2002 to 2005. The text includes references to earlier periods when it is useful to put the industry's recent performance in a historical context.

This report provides trends on public school enrolments, educators and expenditures. It uses figures provided by provincial and territorial departments of education on public elementary and secondary schools.

This publication presents a series of tabulations produced from the General Social Survey on time use of Canadians. It includes information on average amounts of time spent on various activities by sex, by age, by selected role groups.

This bulletin contains salary information of full-time teaching staff at Canadian universities for the academic year 2005/2006. Information is provided for institutions that have determined salaries for the period and have responded to the survey by June 2006. This information is collected annually under the University and College Academic Staff Survey and has a reference date of October 1st. Therefore, the data reflect employment in universities as of that date. Each university must authorize Statistics Canada to release their information. However, information for institutions that have less than 100 full-time staff (and who responded to the survey by June 2006) are not included in this bulletin. This information is available by special request to Client Services, Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics (see Contact information, below).

Researchers and policy makers often use data from nationally representative probability sample surveys. The number of topics covered by such surveys, and hence the amount of interviewing time involved, have typically increased over the years, resulting in increased costs and respondent burden. A potential solution to this problem is to carefully form subsets of the items in a survey and administer one such subset to each respondent. Designs of this type are called "split-questionnaire" designs or "matrix sampling" designs. The administration of only a subset of the survey items to each respondent in a matrix sampling design creates what can be considered missing data. Multiple imputation (Rubin 1987), a general-purpose approach developed for handling data with missing values, is appealing for the analysis of data from a matrix sample, because once the multiple imputations are created, data analysts can apply standard methods for analyzing complete data from a sample survey. This paper develops and evaluates a method for creating matrix sampling forms, each form containing a subset of items to be administered to randomly selected respondents. The method can be applied in complex settings, including situations in which skip patterns are present. Forms are created in such a way that each form includes items that are predictive of the excluded items, so that subsequent analyses based on multiple imputation can recover some of the information about the excluded items that would have been collected had there been no matrix sampling. The matrix sampling and multiple-imputation methods are evaluated using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, one of many nationally representative probability sample surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study demonstrates the feasibility of the approach applied to a major national health survey with complex structure, and it provides practical advice about appropriate items to include in matrix sampling designs in future surveys.

In this Issue is a column where the Editor biefly presents each paper of the current issue of Survey Methodology. As well, it sometimes contain informations on structure or management changes in the journal.

From 1995 to 2004, the proportion of women and men aged 25 to 54 in the labour force grew steadily. However, from 2004 into the first half of 2006, both women's and men's participation rates declined very slightly yet persistently. Is this the beginning of a new trend or does it merely reflect regular fluctuations in the economy? Particular attention is focused on women with young children.

Using tax data, this paper examines earnings instability among lone parents, unattached individuals, and two-parent families over the past two decades. When income tax effects and main sources of income were considered, no strong evidence of a widespread increase in instability was found. Government transfers play a particularly important role in reducing the earnings instability of lone mothers and unattached individuals

Rapid technological change and an increased emphasis on skill-based knowledge have led to an increased need for training entry-level workers and retraining older ones. How do the training rates of workers aged 25 to 34 compare with those aged 55 to 64? Personal and job-related characteristics are examined for training participants, as are employer support, self-directed learning, barriers faced, and objectives and outcomes of training.

A household's ability to afford housing has traditionally been measured using income information derived from the census. A household spending 30% or more of its income on shelter was considered to have a shelter-cost burden. The Survey of Household Spending provides an alternative denominator based on total household spending.

Just as the responsibility of raising children is lifting, many families are facing a new challenge providing care to aging parents, relatives or friends. The intensity of work and eldercare can affect the work life balance of the caregiver. An examination of the prevalence and impact of caregiving among those aged 45 to 64, looking at the hours spent on both paid work and informal care of seniors.

This monograph focuses on the differences in performance on the IALSS tests between people whose mother tongue is French and those whose mother tongue is English in Canada, particularly those living in a minority situation. Various factors are examined with the goal of explaining these differences. Schooling, age, reading and writing habits of everyday life, as well as the living environment explains a large part of the differences between linguistic groups.

This article uses data from the 2001 General Social Survey to examine patterns in leaving the parental home. It compares the transition process for five birth cohorts,with the focus on Wave 1 Boomers (born between 1947 and 1956) and their children in Generation X (born between 1967 and 1976). The differences in patterns of leaving the parental home are examined, and then the principal factors associated with a young person's initial launch into adulthood are identified.

This article examines involvement with the court system of young Canadians born between April 1979 and March 1980. It identifies how large a proportion of them were referred to court and the type of offence with which they were charged. Using data from the Youth Court Survey and the Adult Criminal Court Survey, it follows them as they moved from youth to young adulthood - that is, from age 12 to 21, inclusive

This guide presents information of interest to users of data from the Survey of Household Spending, which gathers information on the spending habits, dwelling characteristics and household equipment of Canadian households. The survey covers private households in the 10 provinces. (The territories are surveyed every second year, starting in 1999.)

This guide includes definitions of survey terms and variables, as well as descriptions of survey methodology and data quality. One section describes the various statistics that can be created using expenditure data (e.g., budget share, market share, aggregates and medians).

Statistics Canada's approach to gathering and disseminating economic data has developed over several decades into a highly integrated system for collection and estimation that feeds the framework of the Canadian System of National Accounts.

The key to this approach was creation of the Unified Enterprise Survey, the goal of which was to improve the consistency, coherence, breadth and depth of business survey data.

The UES did so by bringing many of Statistics Canada's individual annual business surveys under a common framework. This framework included a single survey frame, a sample design framework, conceptual harmonization of survey content, means of using relevant administrative data, common data collection, processing and analysis tools, and a common data warehouse.

The General Social Survey (GSS) is an annual survey that monitors changes and emerging trends in Canadian Society. For the fourth time in Canada, the GSS has collected national level time use data. The GSS is funded through a government initiative aimed to fill data gaps for policy research. In this paper we present the policy framework that supports the survey, and discuss the impact of that framework on the content decisions that GSS has made. Following a brief review of the major findings from the first three cycles of time use data we discuss the lessons learned and best practices in the development, collection and processing of these data in Canada. Finally, we compare the methods and content of the Canadian time use survey with the US survey.

This series presents detailed analyses based on the 2005 General Social Survey on Time Use data. Each report covers a specific subject developed from detailed information on the daily activities of Canadians. Links to other products related to time use are also available.

This paper provides a brief description of the methodology currently used to produce the annual volume of hours worked consistent with the System of National Accounts (SNA). These data are used for labour input in the annual and quarterly measures of labour productivity, as well as in the annual measures of multifactor productivity. For this purpose, hours worked are broken down by educational level and age group, so that changes in the composition of the labour force can be taken into account. They are also used to calculate hourly compensation and the unit labour cost and for simulations of the SNA Input-Output Model; as such, they are integrated as labour force inputs into most SNA satellite accounts (i.e., environment, tourism).

The Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) is a system of names and codes representing areas of Canada. It consists of a three-tiered hierarchy - province or territory, census division, and census subdivision. This relationship is reflected in the seven-digit code. The SGC is used to identify information for particular geographical areas and to tabulate statistics. This volume is designed as a reference and coding manual. It contains tables of SGC units with their names and codes, as well as tables of metropolitan areas. This preliminary version of Volume I will be followed in January 2007 by the final version.

The National, Census Divisions and Census Subdivisions Reference Maps reference guide is available for the following products: Census Division and Census Subdivision Reference Maps, by Province or Territory, 2006 Census and four national maps. The national maps of Canada at a 1:7,500,000 scale showing census divisions, point locations of census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations, statistical area classification and economic regions and census divisions. The Reference Guide describes the content and applications of these products, as well as data quality, and other information.

The Preview of Products and Services offers a complete overview of the proposed products and services that will be released based on the 2006 Census of Population and 2006 Census of Agriculture results. Information (where applicable) will include major characteristics and content, "What's new?" in comparison to 2001, levels of geography, availability/delivery methods, release timeframe and pricing.

The preview is now exclusively an Internet product for 2006 and is no longer available in a formalized print format (i.e. newsletter publication); however, "print-friendly" format is available via the Internet. This product will be updated periodically as details regarding products and services become finalized.

This paper examines the revision cycle for labour productivity estimates over the period 2001 to 2004.

The User Guide to Record Linkage Feedback Reports C1 and C2 is intended for the users of the reports. The reports were developed to facilitate the exchange of information and decisions between the Canadian Cancer Registry and the Provincial and Territorial Cancer Registries.