Keyword search

Description:

Although weights are widely used in survey sampling their ultimate justification from the design perspective is often problematical. Here we will argue for a stepwise Bayes justification for weights that does not depend explicitly on the sampling design. This approach will make use of the standard kind of information present in auxiliary variables however it will not assume a model relating the auxiliary variables to the characteristic of interest. The resulting weight for a unit in the sample can be given the usual interpretation as the number of units in the population which it represents.

Description:

In most surveys all sample units receive the same treatment and the same design features apply to all selected people and households. In this paper, it is explained how survey designs may be tailored to optimize quality given constraints on costs. Such designs are called adaptive survey designs. The basic ingredients of such designs are introduced, discussed and illustrated with various examples.

Description:

A considerable limitation of current methods for automatic data editing is that they treat all edits as hard constraints. That is to say, an edit failure is always attributed to an error in the data. In manual editing, however, subject-matter specialists also make extensive use of soft edits, i.e., constraints that identify (combinations of) values that are suspicious but not necessarily incorrect. The inability of automatic editing methods to handle soft edits partly explains why in practice many differences are found between manually edited and automatically edited data. The object of this article is to present a new formulation of the error localisation problem which can distinguish between hard and soft edits. Moreover, it is shown how this problem may be solved by an extension of the error localisation algorithm of De Waal and Quere (2003).

Description:

SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) is an annual European survey that measures the population's income distribution, poverty and living conditions. It has been conducted in Switzerland since 2007, based on a four-panel rotation scheme that yields both cross-sectional and longitudinal estimates. This article examines the problem of estimating the variance of the cross-sectional poverty and social exclusion indicators selected by Eurostat. Our calculations take into account the non-linearity of the estimators, total non-response at different survey stages, indirect sampling and calibration. We adapt the method proposed by Lavallée (2002) for estimating variance in cases of non-response after weight sharing, and we obtain a variance estimator that is asymptotically unbiased and very easy to program.

Description:

A question that commonly arises in longitudinal surveys is the issue of how to combine differing cohorts of the survey. In this paper we present a novel method for combining different cohorts, and using all available data, in a longitudinal survey to estimate parameters of a semiparametric model, which relates the response variable to a set of covariates. The procedure builds upon the Weighted Generalized Estimation Equation method for handling missing waves in longitudinal studies. Our method is set up under a joint-randomization framework for estimation of model parameters, which takes into account the superpopulation model as well as the survey design randomization. We also propose a design-based, and a joint-randomization, variance estimation method. To illustrate the methodology we apply it to the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, conducted by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Description:

We consider two different self-benchmarking methods for the estimation of small area means based on the Fay-Herriot (FH) area level model: the method of You and Rao (2002) applied to the FH model and the method of Wang, Fuller and Qu (2008) based on augmented models. We derive an estimator of the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) of the You-Rao (YR) estimator of a small area mean that, under the true model, is correct to second-order terms. We report the results of a simulation study on the relative bias of the MSPE estimator of the YR estimator and the MSPE estimator of the Wang, Fuller and Qu (WFQ) estimator obtained under an augmented model. We also study the MSPE and the estimators of MSPE for the YR and WFQ estimators obtained under a misspecified model.

Description:

We consider conservative variance estimation for the Horvitz-Thompson estimator of a population total in sampling designs with zero pairwise inclusion probabilities, known as "non-measurable" designs. We decompose the standard Horvitz-Thompson variance estimator under such designs and characterize the bias precisely. We develop a bias correction that is guaranteed to be weakly conservative (nonnegatively biased) regardless of the nature of the non-measurability. The analysis sheds light on conditions under which the standard Horvitz-Thompson variance estimator performs well despite non-measurability and where the conservative bias correction may outperform commonly-used approximations.

Description:

Readers will find a complete analysis of factors affecting the comparability of Language results between the censuses in the Methodological Document on the 2011 Census Language Data.

Description:

Data matching is a common practice used to reduce the response burden of respondents and to improve the quality of the information collected from respondents when the linkage method does not introduce bias. However, historical linkage, which consists in linking external records from previous years to the year of the initial wave of a survey, is relatively rare and, until now, had not been used at Statistics Canada. The present paper describes the method used to link the records from the Living in Canada Survey pilot to historical tax data on income and labour (T1 and T4 files). It presents the evolution of the linkage rate going back over time and compares earnings data collected from personal income tax returns with those collected from employers file. To illustrate the new possibilities of analysis offered by this type of linkage, the study concludes with an earnings profile by age and sex for different cohorts based on year of birth.

Description: This catalogue briefly describes all Labour Force Survey products offered on a monthly, annual and occasional basis. It includes products, uses, general release dates, formats available and prices, as well as special request services and Internet services. It also introduces any changes to products.

Description:

The first in this series is the Consulting Engineering Services Price Index (CEPI) which is an annual index that measures changes in the prices for services provided by consulting engineers. These services encompass advisory and design work as well as construction or project management. They are provided for many types of projects (fields of specialization), and to both Canadian and foreign clients. Price indexes are published for 10 fields of specialization as well as for national, regional, and foreign markets.

Description:

The National Population Health Survey (NPHS) is designed to enhance the understanding of the processes affecting health. The survey collects cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data. In 1994/95 the survey interviewed a panel of 17,276 individuals, then returned to interview them a second time in 1996/97. The response rate for these individuals was 96% in 1996/97. Data collection from the panel will continue for up to two decades. For cross-sectional purposes, data were collected for a total of 81,000 household residents in all provinces (except people on Indian reserves or on Canadian Forces bases) in 1996/97.

This overview illustrates the variety of information available by presenting data on perceived health, chronic conditions, injuries, repetitive strains, depression, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, consultations with medical professionals, use of medications and use of alternative medicine.

Description:

Documentation to accompany public-use microdata files. Contains a detailed description of the survey design, content and methods, as well as the record layout and the data dictionary.

Description:

Cycle 10 collected data from persons 15 years and older and concentrated on the respondent's family. Topics covered include marital history, common- law unions, biological, adopted and step children, family origins, child leaving and fertility intentions.

The target population of the GSS (General Social Survey) consisted of all individuals aged 15 and over living in a private household in one of the ten provinces.

Description: Demographic documentsis a series of texts intended for scholars and researchers, published occasionally by the Demography Division of Statistics Canada for their methodological, analytical or descriptive interest in the population field.

Description: Many things have been written about Jean-Claude Deville in tributes from the statistical community (see Tillé, 2022a; Tillé, 2022b; Christine, 2022; Ardilly, 2022; and Matei, 2022) and from the École nationale de la statistique et de l’administration économique (ENSAE) and the Société française de statistique. Pascal Ardilly, David Haziza, Pierre Lavallée and Yves Tillé provide an in-depth look at Jean-Claude Deville’s contributions to survey theory. To pay tribute to him, I would like to discuss Jean-Claude Deville’s contribution to the more day-to-day application of methodology for all the statisticians at the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE) and at the public statistics service. To do this, I will use my work experience, and particularly the four years (1992 to 1996) I spent working with him in the Statistical Methods Unit and the discussions we had thereafter, especially in the 2000s on the rolling census.

Description: The validity of survival estimates from cancer registry data depends, in part, on the identification of the deaths of deceased cancer patients. People whose deaths are missed seemingly live on forever and are informally referred to as “immortals”, and their presence in registry data can result in inflated survival estimates. This study assesses the issue of immortals in the Canadian Cancer Registry (CCR) using a recently proposed method that compares the survival of long-term survivors of cancers for which “statistical” cure has been reported with that of similar people from the general population.

Description: This series provides detailed documentation on the issues, concepts, methodology, data quality and other relevant research related to household expenditures from the Survey of Household Spending, the Homeowner Repair and Renovation Survey and the Food Expenditure Survey.

Description: This article presents data sources and methodology for the For-hire Motor Carrier Freight Services Price Index (FHMCFSPI). The FHMCFSPI measures the monthly and quarterly change in the price of shipping services provided by trucking companies in Canada. The index is an important indicator of economic activity within the truck transportation industry, as well as a tool that can be utilized by the industry for cost monitoring, contract assessment and benchmark comparisons.

Description: Recent work in survey domain estimation allows for estimation of population domain means under a priori assumptions expressed in terms of linear inequality constraints. For example, it might be known that the population means are non-decreasing along ordered domains. Imposing the constraints has been shown to provide estimators with smaller variance and tighter confidence intervals. In this paper we consider a formal test of the null hypothesis that all the constraints are binding, versus the alternative that at least one constraint is non-binding. The test of constant versus increasing domain means is a special case. The power of the test is substantially better than the test with the same null hypothesis and an unconstrained alternative. The new test is used with data from the National Survey of College Graduates, to show that salaries are positively related to the subject’s father’s educational level, across fields of study and over several years of cohorts.

Description: This methodological document accompanies the infographic entitled “Students in private postsecondary education, 2020: Results of a feasibility study”. It describes the methodology and data limitations for the integration of the T2202 Tuition and Enrolment Certificate with the Census 2021 for the infographic. It also explores the coherence of the results across different data sources, namely the Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) and T1 Family File (T1FF), to validate the results. The data integration was possible due to the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform (ELMLP).

Description:

A summary of methodological treatments as applied to the August 2020 CPI in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on price collection, price availability, and business closures.

Description:

This document describes the methodological details for the Commercial Rents Services Price Index (CRSPI). It includes information about the purpose of the index, data sources, the index estimation and aggregation methods.

Description:

This study describes the characteristics of residential postal codes of the Canadian population using the 2016 Census and determines how frequently these postal codes are matched to one or more dissemination areas, a unit of census geography.

Description:

In this paper, we present the methodology developed by Statistics Canada to calculate the average annual water yield for Canada. Water yield, for the purposes of this paper, is defined as the amount of freshwater derived from unregulated flow (m³ s^-1) measurements for a given geographic area over a defined period of time. The methodology is applied to the 1971 to 2000 time period.

This research was conducted to fill data gaps in Statistics Canada's water statistics program. These gaps exist because estimates of freshwater flow for Canada have not been calculated regularly and have been produced using a variety of methods that do not necessarily generate comparable results. The methodology developed in this study produced results that are coherent through space and time. These results will be used in the future to investigate changes in water yield on a more disaggregated basis.

To achieve the water yield estimate a database of natural streamflow observations from 1971 to 2000 was compiled. The streamflow values were then converted to a runoff depth and interpolated using ordinary kriging to produce spatial estimates of runoff. The spatial estimates were then scaled to create a National estimate of water yield as a thirty-year average. The methodology and results were then validated using a stability analysis and several techniques involving uncertainty. The result of the methodology indicates that the thirty-year average water yield for Canada is 3435 km³.

Description:

Since 2007/2008, Statistics Canada has centred analysis of data holdings related to health as well as our program of dissemination of health research within the new Health Information and Research Division (HIRD).

The new division has launched a comprehensive approach to analytical planning including environmental scanning and consultation; establishment of strategic multi-year priorities for health research at Statistics Canada; a process of project selection and review that ensures that analytical effort addresses our priorities; metrics to measure our adherence to priorities and the impact of our analytical effort; and communication and dissemination of analytical plans.

This multi-year analytical plan identifies the key high-level priority areas for Statistics Canada's investment in health research for 2008/2009 to 2010/2011, and serves as a blueprint for subsequent operational research planning.

Description:

This guide is intended to help data users understand the concepts and methods used in the 2006 Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS), which was conducted from October 2006 to March 2007.

Technical details on sampling, processing and data quality are included in this guide. Further, the guide explains the relationship between the APS and the 2006 Census and cautions users as to important differences in the data produced from these two sources. Appendix 1 provides a list of communities for which data are available while Appendix 2 contains a glossary of terms that relate to the APS. Answers to some frequently asked questions are provided in Appendix 3. Links to the 2006 APS questionnaires are found in Appendix 4.

Description:

The objective of this study is to examine the feasibility of using provincial and territorial health care files of new registrants as an independent measure of preliminary inter-provincial and inter-territorial migration. The study aims at measuring the conceptual and quantifiable differences between this data source and our present source of the Canada Revenue Agency's Canadian Child Tax Benefit.

Criteria were established to assess the quality and appropriateness of these provincial/territorial health care records as a proxy for our migration estimates: coverage, consistency, timeliness, reliability, level of detail, uniformity and accuracy.

Based on the present analysis, the paper finds that these data do not ameliorate the estimates and would not be suitable at this time as a measure of inter-provincial/territorial migration. These Medicare data though are an important independent data source that can be used for quality evaluation.

Description:

This book provides technical documentation of variables, methodologies and extended lists of references used in developing the research findings reported in "New Frontiers of Research on Retirement". It will be used around the world by researchers and teachers, as well as by students preparing theses related to patterns of transition to retirement. This documentation is important because a large part of book is devoted to scientific papers that are based upon Statistics Canada's data and which require substantial innovations of useful concepts and data.

Description:

The Canadian Productivity Accounts (CPA) of Statistics Canada maintain two multifactor productivity (MFP) programs.

The Major Sector Multifactor Productivity Program develops the indexes of MFP for the total business sector and major industry groups in the business sector.

The Industry Multifactor Productivity Program or the Industry KLEMS Productivity Program develops the industry productivity database that includes MFP indexes, output, capital (K), labour (L), energy (E), materials (M) and services (S) inputs for the individual industries of the business sector at various levels of industry aggregation. This paper describes the methodologies and data sources that are used to construct the major sector MFP indexes and the industry productivity database (or the KLEMS database). More specifically, this paper is meant to:provide a background of the major sector MFP program and the industry KLEMS productivity program;present the methodology for measuring MFP;describe the data sources and data available from the MFP programs;present a quality rating of the industry KLEMS productivity data; anddescribe the research agenda related to the MFP program.

Description:

This guide has been created especially for users needing a step-by-step review on how to find, read and use data, with quick tips on locating information on the Statistics Canada website. Originally published in paper format in the 1980s, revised as part of the 1994 Statistics Canada Catalogue, and then transformed into an electronic version, this guide is continually being updated to maintain its currency and usefulness.

Description:

This paper examines the various products associated with the quarterly labour productivity program. It outlines the nature of the volatility in the very short-run estimates and examines properties of the revisions made to the estimates of Canadian labour productivity and its components (gross domestic product and hours worked) since the inception of the program in 2001.

Description:

This reference document presents an overview of the different questions used by Statistics Canada to identify Aboriginal peoples. It is divided into three parts. Part one is a brief description of the data sources and their limitations. Part 2 deals with the 2006 census questions used to identify Aboriginal peoples while Part 3 deals with the identification questions used in the Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS) and the Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS).

Description:

The National Tourism Indicators will be revised back to 2001 and their volume and price estimates converted to a 2002 reference year, effective June 29, 2007.