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Description:

The present report reviews the results of a mailing experiment that took place within a large scale demonstration project. A postcard and stickers were sent to a random group of project participants in the period between a contact call and a survey. The researchers hypothesized that, because of the additional mailing (the treatment), the response rates to the upcoming survey would increase. There was, however, no difference between the response rates of the treatment group that received the additional mailing and the control group. In the specific circumstances of the mailing experiment, sending project participants a postcard and stickers as a reminder of the upcoming survey and of their participation in the pilot project was not an efficient way to increase response rates.

Description:

Currently underway, the Québec Population Health Survey (EQSP), for which collection will wrap up in February 2009, provides an opportunity, because of the size of its sample, to assess the impact that sending out introductory letters to respondents has on the response rate in a controlled environment. Since this regional telephone survey is expected to have more than 38,000 respondents, it was possible to use part of its sample for this study without having too great an impact on its overall response rate. In random digit dialling (RDD) surveys such as the EQSP, one of the main challenges in sending out introductory letters is reaching the survey units. Doing so depends largely on our capacity to associate an address with the sample units and on the quality of that information.

This article describes the controlled study proposed by the Institut de la statistique du Québec to measure the effect that sending out introductory letters to respondents had on the survey's response rate.

Description:

Based on a representative sample of the Canadian population, this article quantifies the bias resulting from the use of self-reported rather than directly measured height, weight and body mass index (BMI). Associations between BMI categories and selected health conditions are compared to see if the misclassification resulting from the use of self-reported data alters associations between obesity and obesity-related health conditions. The analysis is based on 4,567 respondents to the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) who, during a face-to-face interview, provided self-reported values for height and weight and were then measured by trained interviewers. Based on self-reported data, a substantial proportion of individuals with excess body weight were erroneously placed in lower BMI categories. This misclassification resulted in elevated associations between overweight/obesity and morbidity.

Description:

This study examined the feasibility of developing correction factors to adjust self-reported measures of Body Mass Index to more closely approximate measured values. Data are from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey where respondents were asked to report their height and weight and were subsequently measured. Regression analyses were used to determine which socio-demographic and health characteristics were associated with the discrepancies between reported and measured values. The sample was then split into two groups. In the first, the self-reported BMI and the predictors of the discrepancies were regressed on the measured BMI. Correction equations were generated using all predictor variables that were significant at the p<0.05 level. These correction equations were then tested in the second group to derive estimates of sensitivity, specificity and of obesity prevalence. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between measured, reported and corrected BMI and obesity-related health conditions. Corrected estimates provided more accurate measures of obesity prevalence, mean BMI and sensitivity levels. Self-reported data exaggerated the relationship between BMI and health conditions, while in most cases the corrected estimates provided odds ratios that were more similar to those generated with the measured BMI.

Description:

In 2006 Statistics New Zealand started developing a strategy aimed at coordinating new and existing initiatives focused on respondent load. The development of the strategy lasted more than a year and the resulting commitment to reduce respondent load has meant that the organisation has had to confront a number of issues that impact on the way we conduct our surveys.

The next challenge for Statistics NZ is the transition from the project based initiatives outlined in the strategy to managing load on an ongoing basis.

Description:

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has an obligation to measure and annually report on the burden that it places on businesses participating in its surveys. There are also targets for reduction of costs to businesses complying with government regulation as part of the 2005 Administrative Burdens Reduction Project (ABRP) coordinated by the Better Regulation Executive (BRE).

Respondent burden is measured by looking at the economic costs to businesses. Over time the methodology for measuring this economic cost has changed with the most recent method being the development and piloting of a Standard Cost Model (SCM) approach.

The SCM is commonly used in Europe and is focused on measuring objective administrative burdens for all government requests for information e.g. tax returns, VAT, as well as survey participation. This method was not therefore specifically developed to measure statistical response burden. The SCM methodology is activity-based, meaning that the costs and time taken to fulfil requirements are broken down by activity.

The SCM approach generally collects data using face-to-face interviews. The approach is therefore labour intensive both from a collection and analysis perspective but provides in depth information. The approach developed and piloted at ONS uses paper self-completion questionnaires.

The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of respondent burden reporting and targets; and to review the different methodologies that ONS has used to measure respondent burden from the perspectives of sampling, data collection, analysis and usability.

Description:

We use a Bayesian method to resolve the boundary solution problem of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimate in an incomplete two-way contingency table, using a loglinear model and Dirichlet priors. We compare five Dirichlet priors in estimating multinomial cell probabilities under nonignorable nonresponse. Three priors among them have been used for an incomplete one-way table, while the remaining two new priors are newly proposed to reflect the difference in the response patterns between respondents and the undecided. The Bayesian estimates with the previous three priors do not always perform better than ML estimates unlike previous studies, whereas the two new priors perform better than both the previous three priors and the ML estimates whenever a boundary solution occurs. We use four sets of data from the 1998 Ohio state polls to illustrate how to use and interpret estimation results for the elections. We use simulation studies to compare performance of the five Bayesian estimates under nonignorable nonresponse.

Description:

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.

Description:

Researchers are able to examine changes in trends over time, through the examination of responses to repeatedly-asked questions, among the same respondents, over several cycles of longitudinal data. Working with these repeatedly-measured responses can often be challenging. This article examines trends in youth's volunteering activities, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, to highlight several issues that researchers should consider when working with repeated measures.

Description:

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.

Description:

The Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) is Canada's national survey that gathers information about adults and children whose daily activities are limited by a physical, mental, or other health-related condition or problem.

This report presents a series of tables on the help with everyday activities as well as unmet needs and help providers.

Description:

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.

Description:

This report presents the results of a pilot survey conducted by Statistics Canada to measure the fuel consumption of on-road motor vehicles registered in Canada. This study was carried out in connection with the Canadian Vehicle Survey (CVS) which collects information on road activity such as distance traveled, number of passengers and trip purpose.

Description:

Cycle 15 of the General Social Survey (GSS) is the third cycle to collect detailed information on family life in Canada. The previous GSS cycles that collected family data were Cycles 5 and 10. Topics include demographic characteristics such as age, sex, and marital status; family origin of parents; brothers and sisters; marriages of respondent; common-law unions of respondent; fertility and family intentions; values and attitudes; education history; work history; main activity and other characteristics.

The target population for Cycle 15 of the GSS is all persons 15 years of age and older in Canada, excluding residents of the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, and full-time residents of institutions.

Description:

This table is part of the topic "Ethnocultural Portrait of Canada," which shows 2001 Census data on ethnic groups in Canada, such as their size, geographic location and demographic characteristics. Similar information is available for Canada's visible minority population.

Data on the socio-economic characteristics of these populations will be available at a later date. As well, data on religions in Canada will be available in May 2003.

Additional information on ethnocultural diversity will be available from the Ethnic Diversity Survey in the summer of 2003.

This table can be found in the Topic Bundle: Ethnocultural Portrait of Canada, 2001 Census, Catalogue No. 97F0010XCB2001000.

It is also possible to subscribe to all the day-of-release bundles. For more information, refer to Catalogue No. 97F0023XCB.

This table is available FREE on the Internet, Catalogue No. 97F0010XIE2001001.

Description:

The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), developed jointly by Human Resources Development Canada and Statistics Canada, is a comprehensive survey which follows the development of children in Canada and paints a picture of their lives. The survey monitors children's development and measures the incidence of various factors that influence their development, both positively and negatively.

Description:

Cycle 13 of the General Social Survey (GSS) is the third cycle (following cycles 3 and 8) that collected information in 1999 on the nature and extent of criminal victimisation in Canada. Focus content for cycle 13 addressed two areas of emerging interest: public perception toward alternatives to imprisonment; and spousal violence and senior abuse. Other subjects common to all three cycles include perceptions of crime, police and courts; crime prevention precautions; accident and crime screening sections; and accident and crime incident reports. The target population of the GSS is all individuals aged 15 and over living in a private household in one of the ten provinces.

Description:

The National Population Health Survey (NPHS) program is designed to collect information related to the health of the Canadian population. The first cycle of data collection began in 1994. The institutional component includes long-term residents (expected to stay longer than six months) in health care facilities with four or more beds in Canada with the principal exclusion of the Yukon and the Northwest Teritories. The document has been produced to facilitate the manipulation of the 1996-1997 microdata file containing survey results. The main variables include: demography, health status, chronic conditions, restriction of activity, socio-demographic, and others.

Description:

Information in this microdata file refers to survey data collected in September - November, 1994 for persons 15 years of age and older in Canada's ten provinces. The survey's main data objectives were to measure the prevalence and patterns of alcohol and other drug use, to assess harm and other consequences of drug use and to evaluate trends in recent patterns of use. Canada's Alcohol and Other Drugs Survey (CADS) also updates and expands upon data collected in the first survey, the National Alcohol and Other Drugs Survey (NADS), conducted in 1989.

Description:

Cycle 11 collected data from persons 15 years and older and concentrated on help given or received during temporary difficult times or out of necessity due to long-term health or physical limitations in daily activities either inside or outside the household. The target population of the General Social Survey consisted of all individuals aged 15 and over living in a private household in one of the ten provinces.

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 infographic explains the steps involved in collecting data for all Statistics Canada household and business surveys. The responses are compiled, analyzed and used to make important decisions and are kept strictly confidential.

Description:

This infographic demonstrates the journey of data and how respondents' answers to our surveys become useful data used to make informed decisions. The infographic highlights the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the Survey of Household Spending (SHS), and the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS).

Description:

Web surveys are generally connected with low response rates. Common suggestions in textbooks on Web survey research highlight the importance of the welcome screen in encouraging respondents to take part. The importance of this screen has been empirically proven in research, showing that most respondents breakoff at the welcome screen. However, there has been little research on the effect of the design of this screen on the level of the breakoff rate. In a study conducted at the University of Konstanz, three experimental treatments were added to a survey of the first-year student population (2,629 students) to assess the impact of different design features of this screen on the breakoff rates. The methodological experiments included varying the background color of the welcome screen, varying the promised task duration on this first screen, and varying the length of the information provided on the welcome screen explaining the privacy rights of the respondents. The analyses show that the longer stated length and the more attention given to explaining privacy rights on the welcome screen, the fewer respondents started and completed the survey. However, the use of a different background color does not result in the expected significant difference.

Description:

Coca is a native bush from the Amazon rainforest from which cocaine, an illegal alkaloid, is extracted. Asking farmers about the extent of their coca cultivation areas is considered a sensitive question in remote coca growing regions in Peru. As a consequence, farmers tend not to participate in surveys, do not respond to the sensitive question(s), or underreport their individual coca cultivation areas. There is a political and policy concern in accurately and reliably measuring coca growing areas, therefore survey methodologists need to determine how to encourage response and truthful reporting of sensitive questions related to coca growing. Specific survey strategies applied in our case study included establishment of trust with farmers, confidentiality assurance, matching interviewer-respondent characteristics, changing the format of the sensitive question(s), and non enforcement of absolute isolation of respondents during the survey. The survey results were validated using satellite data. They suggest that farmers tend to underreport their coca areas to 35 to 40% of their true extent.

Description:

When there is unit (whole-element) nonresponse in a survey sample drawn using probability-sampling principles, a common practice is to divide the sample into mutually exclusive groups in such a way that it is reasonable to assume that each sampled element in a group were equally likely to be a survey nonrespondent. In this way, unit response can be treated as an additional phase of probability sampling with the inverse of the estimated probability of unit response within a group serving as an adjustment factor when computing the final weights for the group's respondents. If the goal is to estimate the population mean of a survey variable that roughly behaves as if it were a random variable with a constant mean within each group regardless of the original design weights, then incorporating the design weights into the adjustment factors will usually be more efficient than not incorporating them. In fact, if the survey variable behaved exactly like such a random variable, then the estimated population mean computed with the design-weighted adjustment factors would be nearly unbiased in some sense (i.e., under the combination of the original probability-sampling mechanism and a prediction model) even when the sampled elements within a group are not equally likely to respond.

Description:

In January 2006, a conference on longitudinal surveys hosted by Statistics Canada, the Social and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) concluded that Canada lacks a longitudinal survey which collects information on multiple subjects such as family, human capital, labour health and follows respondents for a long period of time. Following this conference, funds were received from the Policy Research Data Gaps fund (PRDG) to support a pilot survey for a new Canadian Household Panel Survey (CHPS-Pilot). Consultations on the design and content were held with academic and policy experts in 2007 and 2008, and a pilot survey was conducted in the fall of 2008. The objectives of the pilot survey were to (1) test a questionnaire, evaluate interview length and measure the quality of data collected, (2) evaluate several design features; and (3) test reactions to the survey from respondents and field workers. The pilot survey achieved a response rate of 76%, with a median household interview time of 64 minutes. Several innovative design features were tested, and found to be viable. Response to the survey, whether from respondents or interviewers, was generally positive. This paper highlights these and other results from the CHPS-Pilot.

Description:

This article examines the internal consistency of the English and French versions of the Medical Outcomes Study social support scale for a sample of older adults. The second objective is to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis to assess the factor structure of the English and French versions of the scale. A third purpose is to determine if the items comprising the scale operate in the same way for English- and French-speaking respondents.

Description:

Data collection for poverty assessments in Africa is time consuming, expensive and can be subject to numerous constraints. In this paper we present a procedure to collect data from poor households involved in small-scale inland fisheries as well as agricultural activities. A sampling scheme has been developed that captures the heterogeneity in ecological conditions and the seasonality of livelihood options. Sampling includes a three point panel survey of 300 households. The respondents belong to four different ethnic groups randomly chosen from three strata, each representing a different ecological zone. In the first part of the paper some background information is given on the objectives of the research, the study site and survey design, which were guiding the data collection process. The second part of the paper discusses the typical constraints that are hampering empirical work in Sub-Saharan Africa, and shows how different challenges have been resolved. These lessons could guide researchers in designing appropriate socio-economic surveys in comparable settings.

Description:

The current economic downturn in the US could challenge costly strategies in survey operations. In the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), ending the monthly data collection at 31 days could be a less costly alternative. However, this could potentially exclude a portion of interviews completed after 31 days (late responders) whose respondent characteristics could be different in many respects from those who completed the survey within 31 days (early responders). We examined whether there are differences between the early and late responders in demographics, health-care coverage, general health status, health risk behaviors, and chronic disease conditions or illnesses. We used 2007 BRFSS data, where a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized adult U.S. population was selected using a random digit dialing method. Late responders were significantly more likely to be male; to report race/ethnicity as Hispanic; to have annual income higher than $50,000; to be younger than 45 years of age; to have less than high school education; to have health-care coverage; to be significantly more likely to report good health; and to be significantly less likely to report hypertension, diabetes, or being obese. The observed differences between early and late responders on survey estimates may hardly influence national and state-level estimates. As the proportion of late responders may increase in the future, its impact on surveillance estimates should be examined before excluding from the analysis. Analysis on late responders only should combine several years of data to produce reliable estimates.

Description:

The paper examines the results of an initial evaluation of the effectiveness of the lighter, non-bureaucratic approach to questionnaire design called the SLID (Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics ) Notebook

Description:

This report presents the results of the May 1993 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) test as they relate to the wealth items, at the individual level and at the family level.

Description:

This paper examines the issues and the procedures designed to maintain a representative sample of the population for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).

Description:

This paper describes the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) following rules, which govern who is traced and who is interviewed. It also outlines the conceptual basis for these procedures.

Description:

This report presents general observations of the first annual Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) income interview by members of the head office project team. It also gives a summary of responses from a subset of interviewers who were asked to complete a debriefing questionnaire after completing SLID collection.

Description:

This research paper represents a reference guide for the contact and demographic modules of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).

Description:

This paper presents comments from a sample of interviewers from each regional office who were selected to complete a debriefing questionnaire to evaluate the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) 1995 income interview.