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The context of the discussion is the increasing incidence of international surveys, of which one is the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project, which began in 2002. The ITC country surveys are longitudinal, and their aim is to evaluate the effects of policy measures being introduced in various countries under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The challenges of organization, data collection and analysis in international surveys are reviewed and illustrated. Analysis is an increasingly important part of the motivation for large scale cross-cultural surveys. The fundamental challenge for analysis is to discern the real response (or lack of response) to policy change, separating it from the effects of data collection mode, differential non-response, external events, time-in-sample, culture, and language. Two problems relevant to statistical analysis are discussed. The first problem is the question of when and how to analyze pooled data from several countries, in order to strengthen conclusions which might be generally valid. While in some cases this seems to be straightforward, there are differing opinions on the extent to which pooling is possible and reasonable. It is suggested that for formal comparisons, random effects models are of conceptual use. The second problem is to find models of measurement across cultures and data collection modes which will enable calibration of continuous, binary and ordinal responses, and produce comparisons from which extraneous effects have been removed. It is noted that hierarchical models provide a natural way of relaxing requirements of model invariance across groups.

Dependent interviewing (DI) is used in many longitudinal surveys to "feed forward" data from one wave to the next. Though it is a promising technique which has been demonstrated to enhance data quality in certain respects, relatively little is known about how it is actually administered in the field. This research seeks to address this issue through behavior coding. Various styles of DI were employed in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) in January, 2006, and recordings were made of pilot field interviews. These recordings were analysed to determine whether the questions (particularly the DI aspects) were administered appropriately and to explore the respondent's reaction to the fed-forward data. Of particular interest was whether respondents confirmed or challenged the previously-reported information, whether the prior wave data came into play when respondents were providing their current-wave answers, and how any discrepancies were negotiated by the interviewer and respondent. Also of interest was to examine the effectiveness of various styles of DI. For example, in some cases the prior wave data was brought forward and respondents were asked to explicitly confirm it; in other cases the previous data was read and respondents were asked if the situation was still the same. Results indicate varying levels of compliance in terms of initial question-reading, and suggest that some styles of DI may be more effective than others.

In longitudinal surveys nonresponse often occurs in a pattern that is not monotone. We consider estimation of time-dependent means under the assumption that the nonresponse mechanism is last-value-dependent. Since the last value itself may be missing when nonresponse is nonmonotone, the nonresponse mechanism under consideration is nonignorable. We propose an imputation method by first deriving some regression imputation models according to the nonresponse mechanism and then applying nonparametric regression imputation. We assume that the longitudinal data follow a Markov chain with finite second-order moments. No other assumption is imposed on the joint distribution of longitudinal data and their nonresponse indicators. A bootstrap method is applied for variance estimation. Some simulation results and an example concerning the Current Employment Survey are presented.

Sample weights can be calibrated to reflect the known population totals of a set of auxiliary variables. Predictors of finite population totals calculated using these weights have low bias if these variables are related to the variable of interest, but can have high variance if too many auxiliary variables are used. This article develops an "adaptive calibration" approach, where the auxiliary variables to be used in weighting are selected using sample data. Adaptively calibrated estimators are shown to have lower mean squared error and better coverage properties than non-adaptive estimators in many cases.

We propose a method for estimating the variance of estimators of changes over time, a method that takes account of all the components of these estimators: the sampling design, treatment of non-response, treatment of large companies, correlation of non-response from one wave to another, the effect of using a panel, robustification, and calibration using a ratio estimator. This method, which serves to determine the confidence intervals of changes over time, is then applied to the Swiss survey of value added.

The analysis of stratified multistage sample data requires the use of design information such as stratum and primary sampling unit (PSU) identifiers, or associated replicate weights, in variance estimation. In some public release data files, such design information is masked as an effort to avoid their disclosure risk and yet to allow the user to obtain valid variance estimation. For example, in area surveys with a limited number of PSUs, the original PSUs are split or/and recombined to construct pseudo-PSUs with swapped second or subsequent stage sampling units. Such PSU masking methods, however, obviously distort the clustering structure of the sample design, yielding biased variance estimates possibly with certain systematic patterns between two variance estimates from the unmasked and masked PSU identifiers. Some of the previous work observed patterns in the ratio of the masked and unmasked variance estimates when plotted against the unmasked design effect. This paper investigates the effect of PSU masking on variance estimates under cluster sampling regarding various aspects including the clustering structure and the degree of masking. Also, we seek a PSU masking strategy through swapping of subsequent stage sampling units that helps reduce the resulting biases of the variance estimates. For illustration, we used data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) with some artificial modification. The proposed strategy performs very well in reducing the biases of variance estimates. Both theory and empirical results indicate that the effect of PSU masking on variance estimates is modest with minimal swapping of subsequent stage sampling units. The proposed masking strategy has been applied to the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data release.

The design of a stratified simple random sample without replacement from a finite population deals with two main issues: the definition of a rule to partition the population into strata, and the allocation of sampling units in the selected strata. This article examines a tree-based strategy which plans to approach jointly these issues when the survey is multipurpose and multivariate information, quantitative or qualitative, is available. Strata are formed through a hierarchical divisive algorithm that selects finer and finer partitions by minimizing, at each step, the sample allocation required to achieve the precision levels set for each surveyed variable. In this way, large numbers of constraints can be satisfied without drastically increasing the sample size, and also without discarding variables selected for stratification or diminishing the number of their class intervals. Furthermore, the algorithm tends not to define empty or almost empty strata, thus avoiding the need for strata collapsing aggregations. The procedure was applied to redesign the Italian Farm Structure Survey. The results indicate that the gain in efficiency held using our strategy is nontrivial. For a given sample size, this procedure achieves the required precision by exploiting a number of strata which is usually a very small fraction of the number of strata available when combining all possible classes from any of the covariates.

Optimum stratification is the method of choosing the best boundaries that make strata internally homogeneous, given some sample allocation. In order to make the strata internally homogenous, the strata should be constructed in such a way that the strata variances for the characteristic under study be as small as possible. This could be achieved effectively by having the distribution of the main study variable known and create strata by cutting the range of the distribution at suitable points. If the frequency distribution of the study variable is unknown, it may be approximated from the past experience or some prior knowledge obtained at a recent study. In this paper the problem of finding Optimum Strata Boundaries (OSB) is considered as the problem of determining Optimum Strata Widths (OSW). The problem is formulated as a Mathematical Programming Problem (MPP), which minimizes the variance of the estimated population parameter under Neyman allocation subject to the restriction that sum of the widths of all the strata is equal to the total range of the distribution. The distributions of the study variable are considered as continuous with Triangular and Standard Normal density functions. The formulated MPPs, which turn out to be multistage decision problems, can then be solved using dynamic programming technique proposed by Bühler and Deutler (1975). Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the computational details. The results obtained are also compared with the method of Dalenius and Hodges (1959) with an example of normal distribution.

This paper considers the optimum allocation in multivariate stratified sampling as a nonlinear matrix optimisation of integers. As a particular case, a nonlinear problem of the multi-objective optimisation of integers is studied. A full detailed example including some of proposed techniques is provided at the end of the work.

The present work illustrates a sampling strategy useful for obtaining planned sample size for domains belonging to different partitions of the population and in order to guarantee the sampling errors of domain estimates be lower than given thresholds. The sampling strategy that covers the multivariate multi-domain case is useful when the overall sample size is bounded and consequently the standard solution of using a stratified sample with the strata given by cross-classification of variables defining the different partitions is not feasible since the number of strata is larger than the overall sample size. The proposed sampling strategy is based on the use of balanced sampling selection technique and on a GREG-type estimation. The main advantages of the solution is the computational feasibility which allows one to easily implement an overall small area strategy considering jointly the sampling design and the estimator and improving the efficiency of the direct domain estimators. An empirical simulation on real population data and different domain estimators shows the empirical properties of the examined sample strategy.

This table presents selected demographic, cultural, labour force, educational and income characteristics focusing on population groups.

This table presents selected demographic, cultural, labour force, educational and income characteristics focusing on place of work

This new product will present data for specific census topics and population groups according to selected demographic, cultural, and socio-economic characteristics. These detailed 'profile-type' tables expand the analytical depth of basic census information.

This product presents a timely picture of employment, earnings and hours which is vital for the planning and decision-making purposes of Canada's businesses and governments. The tabulations consist of annual and monthly labour market information and historical data series from 1991 to 2007 . The major variables for over 200 industries are provided at the national and provincial/territorial levels. Also included are quarterly and annual estimates by enterprise, size of employment, average weekly earnings and hours, and notes on the concepts and methods of the survey. This electronic publication has been produced using the Beyond 20/20 browser. It allows users to browse the information on screen, create data tables and import data in the software of their choice.

This document presents 2006 Census data tables on Inuit and non-Aboriginal populations by Inuit regions. The tables provide data on population growth, age groups, living arrangements of children, language, labour, housing, earnings and income.

This series presents selected 2006 Census data on the Aboriginal identity population. The data will be published in three parts. Part one contains data tables on Inuit and non-Aboriginal populations by Inuit regions. Part two contains data tables on Aboriginal identity groups (Inuit, Métis and First Nations people) and the non-Aboriginal population, for Canada, provinces and territories. Part three contains data tables on First Nations people by registered Indian status, living on and off reserve, for Canada, provinces and territories. The tables provide data on topics including population growth, age groups, living arrangements of children, language, labour, housing, earnings and total income. They are intended to complement the information provided in the 2006 Census releases.

This table contains information from the 2006 Census, presented according to the statistical area classification (SAC). The SAC groups census subdivisions according to whether they are a component of a census metropolitan area, a census agglomeration, a census metropolitan area and census agglomeration influenced zone (strong MIZ, moderate MIZ, weak MIZ or no MIZ) or of the territories (Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon Territory). The SAC is used for data dissemination purposes.

Data characteristics presented according to the SAC include age, marital status, Aboriginal identity, mother tongue, knowledge of official languages, mobility status, immigration, visible minority groups, education, labour force activity, occupation, industry, income and dwellings. Data are presented for Canada, provinces and territories. The data characteristics presented within this table may differ from those of other products in the "Profiles" series.

In the census product line, groups of variables, such as this one, are referred to as release components of profiles. These are made available with the major releases of variables of the census cycle, starting with age and sex. Together, they will form a complete cumulative profile of all the variables for each level of geography, plus one cumulative profile for the dissolved census subdivisions.

Starting with the age and sex major day of release, and on major days of release thereafter, profile component data will be available for particular topics at the Canada, province and territory, census division and census subdivision levels, at the census metropolitan area, census agglomeration and census tract levels, and at the federal electoral district (based on the 2003 Representation Order) level. Profile component data for all other standard areas, including dissemination areas, urban areas, designated places and forward sortation areas, will be available approximately four weeks after the major days of release.

These shelf tables present data on divorces for Canada, provinces and territories. The counts of divorces included in this report represent the "decrees absolute" granted and do not include any other form of marital dissolution, such as separations.

A series of supporting data tables accompany the analytical article from the 2006 Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS). These supporting data tables provide data at the provincial/regional level for Aboriginal, off-reserve First Nations, Métis and Inuit children under 6 years old for major themes covered in the analytical article: How often the child talks or plays together with different people, focusing attention on each other for five minutes or more; Feelings about home and daily life (housing conditions; support network from family, friends, or others; main job or activity; way spend free time; finances); Feelings about community (as a place with good schools, nursery schools and early childhood education programs; as a place with adequate facilities for children for example, community centres, rinks, gyms, parks; as a safe community; as a place with health facilities; as a place with actively involved members of the community; as a place with First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultural activities); Child care arrangements (percentage of children in child care; percentage of children in a child care arrangement that provides learning opportunities; percentage of children in a child care arrangement that promotes traditional and cultural values and customs); and, Percentage of children living in low-income families.

This is one of three fact sheets in the series using information from the 2006 Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS) and 2006 Census. The purpose of this fact sheet is to provide information on the topics of family (persons involved in raising children, size of families, age of parents, adoption, living with grandparents), housing conditions (crowding, dwellings in need of major repairs, levels of satisfaction with housing conditions), feelings about community (facilities), and cultural activities (participation in traditional activities, having someone to help the child understand Inuit history and culture, cultural activities in child care). Results are presented for all Inuit children. Some results are also presented for those in Inuit Nunaat (meaning Inuit homeland): Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador, the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories.

This is one of three fact sheets in the series using information from the 2006 Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS) and 2006 Census. The purpose of this fact sheet is to provide information on the topics of family (persons involved in raising children, size of families, age of parents, lone parent families), socio-economic status (low-income economic families), feelings about community (as a place to raise children), and cultural activities (participation in traditional activities, having someone to help the child understand Métis history and culture, cultural activities in child care) for Métis children under six years of age.

This is one of three fact sheets in the series using information from the 2006 Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS) and 2006 Census. The purpose of this fact sheet is to provide information on the topics of family (persons involved in raising children, size of families, age of parents, lone parent families, living with grandparents), socio-economic status (low-income economic families), feelings about community (as a place to raise children), and cultural activities (participation in traditional activities, having someone to help the child understand First Nations history and culture, cultural activities in child care) for First Nations children under six years of age living off reserve.

This is one of three fact sheets in the series using information from the 2006 Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS) and 2006 Census. The purpose of this fact sheet is to provide information on the topics of family (persons involved in raising children, size of families, age of parents, adoption, living with grandparents), housing conditions (crowding, dwellings in need of major repairs, levels of satisfaction with housing conditions), feelings about community (facilities), and cultural activities (participation in traditional activities, having someone to help the child understand Inuit history and culture, cultural activities in child care). Results are presented for all Inuit children. Some results are also presented for those in Inuit Nunaat (meaning Inuit homeland): Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador, the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories.

The present study illustrates the differential impact on regional economies of relative price changes stemming from commodity price movements, exchange rate changes and changes in international manufactured goods prices. It focuses on Canadian provinces, which are a large, geographically distributed federation of regional economies with widely differing economic bases. In this regard, the study illuminates an important method for examining regional economic performance that is particularly well suited to federations such as Russia or the European Monetary Union, or to large countries such as the United States.

The post-2002 boom in natural resource prices has been a dominant factor in sectors such as exports, investment and the stock market. However, they have had little direct impact on real output or employment, but indirectly have lifted domestic spending.

This publication presents estimates of government revenues attributable to tourism for the years 2000 to 2007. Estimates of the revenue attributable to tourism spending by non-residents (i.e. tourism exports) and by residents (i.e. tourism domestic demand) are also included for the first time. The main data sources are the Canadian Tourism Satellite Account, National Tourism Indicators, the Income and Expenditure Accounts, the Input-Output tables and T4 tax remittance files.

Government revenue covers receipts from taxes on incomes (i.e., on employment earnings, corporate profits, net income of unincorporated business and government business enterprises), contributions to social insurance plans (i.e., premiums for Canada/Quebec Pension Plan, Employment Insurance and workers compensation), taxes on production and products (such as sales and property taxes), and from sales of government goods and services. These revenues are broken down into parts that can be attributed to tourism spending, tourism domestic demand and tourism exports for government as a whole and for the three levels of government (federal, provincial/territorial and municipal) separately. Estimates of the government revenue generated per $100 of tourism spending overall and by residents and non-residents are reported as well. The publication contains several charts and summary tables showing revenues attributable to tourism by level of government and by source of revenue. It also contains a discussion of the concepts, definitions, data sources and methods used in the study.

This study estimates the effect of an additional year of schooling (Grade 10) on academic performance, with the particular aim of understanding the role of schooling in shaping the gender and income divides in academic performance. To identify the returns to schooling, the study takes advantage of a setting whereby standardized tests were administered to large samples of students of very close age, but who were in different school grades as a result of school-entry laws, thus creating a sharp discontinuity in school grades. The findings suggest that one additional year of high school (Grade 10) is associated with a large improvement in overall reading and mathematics performance, and that it had a smaller improvement in science performance. However, the improvements are not equally distributed: mathematics scores improve more for boys than for girls, and reading and science scores improve more for lower than for higher income youth. Most importantly, we find no evidence that girls or higher income youth benefit more from an additional year of high school in any test area. These findings suggest that the key to understanding the weaker academic performance of boys and lower income youth may lie in earlier school years, the home or at birth.

This bulletin updates and summarizes information on the structure and trends for the rural population of Canada, using three major definitions of rural Canada: the "census rural" definition, the "rural and small town" definition and the OECD "predominantly rural region" definition. Each definition illustrates a specific aspect of rural Canada. This analysis is entirely based on data from the Census of Population from 1981 to 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2007).

The analysis for this report is based on data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS). The survey was designed by Human Resources and Social Development Canada and Statistics Canada. YITS is a longitudinal survey, which collects information on educational and labour market pathways of a sample of young Canadians in the 18 to 20 age group in 1999. Respondents were asked to provide a range of information on their education and employment experiences as well as information on their personal characteristics. They were interviewed four times since the implementation of the survey, in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. In this report, the data used are from the first four cycles and describe where they stood in their school to work pathway in December 2005 when they were 24 to 26 years of age.

This report is a follow-up of a previous study of postsecondary participation (Shaienks and Gluszynski, 2007) which found that the overall postsecondary dropout rate was 15%. That rate however, differs across all types of institution and by demographic, family and school characteristics. This paper explores the impact of those characteristics on participation, graduation and dropping out of different types of postsecondary institution.

Three new variables were developed to account for the type of institution attended by the student and the status in each of them. The university status, the college status and the other postsecondary status allow us to determine independently the outcome of participation in the different types of institution and profile graduates, continuers and especially drop outs according to their specific characteristics.

This paper focuses on the role of investments in infrastructure in Canada. The size of infrastructure investments relative to other capital stock sets this country apart from most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The paper reviews the approaches taken by other researchers to define infrastructure. It then outlines a taxonomy to define those assets that should be considered as infrastructure and that can be used to assess the importance of different types of capital investments. It briefly considers how to define the portion of infrastructure that should be considered 'public'. The final two parts of the paper apply the proposed classification system to data on Canada's capital stock, and ask the following questions: how much infrastructure does Canada have and in which sectors of the economy is this infrastructure located? Finally, the paper investigates how Canada's infrastructure has evolved over the last four decades, both in the commercial and non-commercial sectors, and compares these trends with the pattern that can be found in the United States.

This guide focuses on the following demographic variables: Mobility and migration.

Provides information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2006 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts, data quality and historical comparability. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

These guides provide information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2006 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts, data quality and historical comparability. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Starting in 1994, the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) will follow individuals and families for at least six years, tracking their labour market experiences, changes in income and family circumstances. An initial proposal for the content of SLID, entitled "Content of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics : Discussion Paper", was distributed in February 1992.

That paper served as a background document for consultation with and a review by interested users. The content underwent significant change during this process. Based upon the revised content, a large-scale test of SLID will be conducted in February and May 1993.

The present document outlines the income and wealth content to be tested in May 1993. This document is really a continuation of SLID Research Paper Series 92-01A, which outlines the demographic and labour content used in the January /February 1993 test.

When a survey respondent is asked to recall various events, it is known that the quality of the responses diminishes as the length of recall increases. On the other hand, increasing the frequency of data collection increases both the costs of collection and the burden on the respondents. The paper examines options which attempt to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. As it relates to this decision, the paper also describes how the sample has been designed to ensure that it remains representative of the target population, both for a given year and over time.

The conclusion is that, at this time, SLID should collect labour data in January to cover the previous calendar year and to collect income data in May, again to cover the previous calendar year.

A Preliminary Interview will be conducted on the first panel of SLID, in January 1993, as a supplement to the Labour Force Survey. The first panel is made up of about 20,000 households that are rotating out of the Labour Force Survey in January and February, 1993.

The purpose of this document is to provide a description of the purpose of the SLID Preliminary Interview and the question wordings to be used.

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).

This paper provides an overview of the productivity program at Statistics Canada and a brief description of Canada's productivity performance. The paper defines productivity and the various measures that are used to investigate different aspects of productivity growth. It describes the difference between partial productivity measures (such as labour productivity) and a more complete measure (multifactor productivity) and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The paper explains why productivity is important. It outlines how productivity growth fits into the growth accounting framework and how this framework is used to examine the various sources of economic growth. The paper briefly discusses the challenges that face statisticians in measuring productivity growth. It also provides an overview of Canada's long-term productivity performance and compares Canada to the United States - both in terms of productivity levels and productivity growth rates.

The Record Linkage Overview describes the process used in annual internal record linkage of the Canadian Cancer Registry. The steps include: preparation; pre-processing; record linkage; post-processing; analysis and resolution; resolution entry; and, resolution processing.

The compendium of Canadian Cancer Registry procedures manuals set out the rules for reporting cancer data to the CCR for all provincial and territorial cancer registries.