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Description: The Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) is a comprehensive source of data that plays a key role in the understanding of the economic behaviour of immigrants. It is the only annual Canadian dataset that allows users to study the characteristics of immigrants to Canada at the time of admission and their economic outcomes and regional (inter-provincial) mobility over a time span of more than 40 years.

Description: Since 1984, an annual international symposium on methodological issues has been sponsored by Statistics Canada. Proceedings have been available since 1987.

Description: BigData users and the BigData research community are expanding rapidly, while statisticians at large are seemingly becoming divided between those who are enthusiastic and those who are concerned, if not downright hostile. Is BigData also a big step ahead, truly advancing our ability to extract meaningful information and actual knowledge from data? Is BigData underplaying traditional statistical inference as we know it, supplanting survey methodology as a low-cost futuristic option? In this paper I will attempt to unravel the multifaceted relationship bridging BigData to sampling methodology. Starting by reasoning why it should be interesting to look at BigData from a sampling statistician’s perspective, I will delve deeper into the somewhat ambiguous definition of BigData and share some very personal considerations and views on the matter. In the process, several open questions will arise while discussing a personal selection of insights that are traceable through the vast body of statistical literature around BigData and sampling methodology. The discussion will take various angles explored across nine key points, and it will conclude with a forward-looking perspective on a main challenge for future research: addressing the strong assumptions needed to manage deviations from purely randomized data collection.

Description: In his article, Professor Carl-Erik Särndal presents for sample-based statistics a new conceptual framework with only a few key assumptions. Selected aspects of the research tradition in Survey Science are briefly discussed in my comments.

Description: This reference guide is intended for users of the Census Subdivisions Boundary File. The guide provides an overview of the file, the general methodology used to create it, and important technical information for users.

Description: The Census Subdivision Boundary File contains the boundaries of all census subdivisions which combined cover all of Canada. A census subdivision is a municipality or an area treated as an equivalent to a municipality for statistical purposes (for example, unorganized territories). The file provides a framework for mapping and spatial analysis using commercially available geographic information systems (GIS) or other mapping software.

The Census Subdivision Boundary File is portrayed in Lambert conformal conic projection and is based on the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). A reference guide is available (92-162-G).

Description: This reference guide is intended for users of the Census of Population Road Network File (92-500-X). It provides an overview of the general methodology used to create this file, as well as important technical information.

Description:

This geographical file represents Canada's national road network, containing information such as street names, types, directions and address ranges.

A reference guide is available (Road Network File, Reference Guide, 92-500-G).

Description: The Guide to the Labour Force Survey contains a dictionary of concepts and definitions and covers topics such as survey methodology, data collection, data processing and data quality. It also contains information on products and services, sub-provincial geography descriptions as well as the survey questionnaire.

Description: The Guide to the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours contains a dictionary of concepts and definitions and covers topics such as survey methodology, data collection and processing, and data quality. It also provides information on products and services, as well as the survey questionnaire.

Description:

This is a CD-ROM product from the Ontario Adult Literacy Survey (OALS), conducted in the spring of 1998 with the goal of providing information on: the ability of Ontario immigrants to use either English or French in their daily activities; and on their self-perceived literacy skills, training needs and barriers to training.

In order to cover the majority of Ontario immigrants, the Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) of Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Kitchener, London and St. Catharines were included in the sample. With these 6 CMAs, about 83% of Ontario immigrants were included in the sample frame. This sample of 7,107 dwellings covered the population of Ontario immigrants in general as well as specifically targetting immigrants with a mother tongue of Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Polish, and Spanish and immigrants born in the Caribbean Islands with a mother tongue of English.

Each interview was approximately 1.5 hours in duration and consisted of a half-hour questionnaire, asking demographic and literacy-related questions as well as a one-hour literacy test. This literacy test was derived from that used in the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and covered the domains of document and quantitative literacy. An overall response rate to the survey of 76% was achieved, resulting in 4,648 respondents.

Description:

The Absence from Work Survey was designed primarily to fulfill the objectives of Human Resources Development Canada. They sponsor the qualified wage loss replacement plan which applies to employers who have their own private plans to cover employee wages lost due to sickness, accident, etc. Employers who fall under the plan are granted a reduction in their quotas payable to the Unemployment Insurance Commission. The data generated from the responses to the supplement will provide input to determine the rates for quota reductions for qualified employers.

Although the Absence from Work Survey collects information on absences from work due to illness, accident or pregnancy, it does not provide a complete picture of people who have been absent from work for these reasons because the concepts and definitions have been developed specifically for the needs of the client. Absences in this survey are defined as being at least two weeks in length, and respondents are only asked the three reasons for their most recent absence and the one preceding it.

Description:

This file provides data on the characteristics of the population such as ethnic origin, labour force activity and income levels. It contains 122 variables.

The Microdata Files contain samples of anonymous responses to the 1996 Census questionnaire. The files have been carefully scrutinized to ensure the complete confidentiality of the individual responses. PUMFs enable the development of statistical information about Canadians, the families and households to which they belong, and the dwellings in which they live.

Microdata files are unique among census products in that they give users access to non-aggregated data. This makes PUMFs a powerful research tools. The user can group and manipulate these variables to suit his/her own data and research requirements. These provide quick access to a comprehensive social and economic database about Canada and its people.

All subject matter covered by the census is included in these files.

The 1996 PUMFs will only be released on CD-ROM using microcomputer applications.

Description: Environmental protection expenditures in the business sector, preliminary data presents operating and capital expenditures made by primary and manufacturing industries in response to, or in anticipation of, environmental regulations and conventions. The results are from the Environmental Protection Expenditure Survey. The data contained in Environmental protection expenditures in the business sector help to fill important gaps in existing information on the demand side of the 'environment industry.' More specifically, it provides a measure of the cost to the industry of adopting pollution prevention and abatement technologies and other environmental protection practices. Data included in Environmental protection expenditures in the business sector are components of a national statistical database on the environment industry.

Description:

This is a user guide to the National Private Vehicle Use Survey. The purpose of the survey is to provide measures of vehicle fuel use and the determinants of fuel use. This information will provide the basis for future policy decisions aimed at reducing the fuel consumed by personal-use vehicles.

To this end, it is important to understand how consumers use their vehicles in order to design adequate energy efficiency programs and alternative energy programs. The specific objectives of the survey are: provide national estimates of annual fuel use for personal-use vehicles (includes passenger cars/light trucks and vans); provide national estimates of total distance driven; identify the main factors in the purchase of a vehicle; identify in a general fashion how households use their vehicles; develop driver profiles by sex, age, marital status, income, education and occupational group; and develop vehicle profiles by vehicle body type, model year, number of cylinders, transmission type, and presence or absence of air conditioning.

Description:

This report presents results of the Waste Management Industry Survey, 1995, which gathered information on the financial characteristics and waste management activities undertaken in the business sector.

Description:

The National Population Health Survey (NPHS) uses the Labour Force Survey sampling frame to draw a sample of approximately 22,000 households. The sample is distributed over four quarterly collection periods. In each household, some limited information is collected from all household members and one person, aged 12 years and over, in each household is randomly selected for a more in-depth interview.

The questionnaire includes content related to health status, use of health services, determinants of health and a range of demographic and economic information. For example, the health status information includes self-perception of health, a health status index, chronic conditions, and activity restrictions. The use of health services is probed through visits to health care providers, both traditional and non-traditional, and the use of drugs and other medications. Health determinants include smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and in the first survey, emphasis has been placed on the collection of selected psycho-social factors that may influence health, such as stress, self-esteem and social support. The demographic and economic information includes age, sex, education, ethnicity, household income and labour force status.

Description: This public use microdata file provides unaggregated data on the Aboriginal adult population - those who identify with their Aboriginal origin(s) and those who do not. For persons who identify, it contains almost 700 variables from the 1991 survey, such as, the group with which they identify, language proficiency, disability, chronic health conditions, schooling, work experience and the 1991 Census variables such as, income levels, marital status, fertility. The same census variables are provided for the population who does not identify.

Description:

The survey, begun in February 1994, monitors the smoking patterns of Canadians over a 12 month period and to measure any changes in smoking resulting from the decrease in taxes in cigarettes which took place in February 1994 in some provinces. It is related to MDF 82M0006. Updates are included in the microdata file price. A guide for this microdata file is available.

Description:

Online data collection emerged in 1995 as an alternative approach for conducting certain types of consumer research studies and has grown in 2008. This growth has been primarily in studies where non-probability sampling methods are used. While online sampling has gained acceptance for some research applications, serious questions remain concerning online samples' suitability for research requiring precise volumetric measurement of the behavior of the U.S. population, particularly their travel behavior. This paper reviews literature and compares results from studies using probability samples and online samples to understand whether results differ from the two sampling approaches. The paper also demonstrates that online samples underestimate critical types of travel even after demographic and geographic weighting.

Description:

In the evaluation of prospective survey designs, statistical agencies generally must consider a large number of design factors that may have a substantial impact on both survey costs and data quality. Assessments of trade-offs between cost and quality are often complicated by limitations on the amount of information available regarding fixed and marginal costs related to: instrument redesign and field testing; the number of primary sample units and sample elements included in the sample; assignment of instrument sections and collection modes to specific sample elements; and (for longitudinal surveys) the number and periodicity of interviews. Similarly, designers often have limited information on the impact of these design factors on data quality.

This paper extends standard design-optimization approaches to account for uncertainty in the abovementioned components of cost and quality. Special attention is directed toward the level of precision required for cost and quality information to provide useful input into the design process; sensitivity of cost-quality trade-offs to changes in assumptions regarding functional forms; and implications for preliminary work focused on collection of cost and quality information. In addition, the paper considers distinctions between cost and quality components encountered in field testing and production work, respectively; incorporation of production-level cost and quality information into adaptive design work; as well as costs and operational risks arising from the collection of detailed cost and quality data during production work. The proposed methods are motivated by, and applied to, work with partitioned redesign of the interview and diary components of the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Description:

Over the past few years, Statistics Canada has conducted several analytical studies using paradata to learn more about various issues surrounding the data collection process and practices. In particular, these investigations have attempted to better understand how data collection progresses through its cycle, to identify strategic opportunities, to evaluate new collection initiatives and to improve the way the agency conducts and manages its surveys. The main objectives of this paper are to present the main results of these past and ongoing investigations describing Statistics Canada's experiences with regards to paradata. Future research plans that focus on identifying viable operational strategies that could improve efficiency or data quality are also discussed.

Description:

In one sense, a questionnaire is never complete. Test results, paradata and research findings constantly provide reasons to update and improve the questionnaire. In addition, establishments change over time and questions need to be updated accordingly. In reality, it doesn't always work like this. At Statistics Sweden there are several examples of questionnaires that were designed at one point in time and rarely improved later on. However, we are currently trying to shift the perspective on questionnaire design from a linear to a cyclic one. We are developing a cyclic model in which the questionnaire can be improved continuously in multiple rounds. In this presentation, we will discuss this model and how we work with it.

Description:

The Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH) is a monthly survey using two sources of data: a census of payroll deduction (PD7) forms (administrative data) and a survey of business establishments. This paper focuses on the processing of the administrative data, from the weekly receipt of data from the Canada Revenue Agency to the production of monthly estimates produced by SEPH.

The edit and imputation methods used to process the administrative data have been revised in the last several years. The goals of this redesign were primarily to improve the data quality and to increase the consistency with another administrative data source (T4) which is a benchmark measure for Statistics Canada's System of National Accounts people. An additional goal was to ensure that the new process would be easier to understand and to modify, if needed. As a result, a new processing module was developed to edit and impute PD7 forms before their data is aggregated to the monthly level.

This paper presents an overview of both the current and new processes, including a description of challenges that we faced during development. Improved quality is demonstrated both conceptually (by presenting examples of PD7 forms and their treatment under the old and new systems) and quantitatively (by comparison to T4 data).

Description:

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities' (FCM) Quality of Life Reporting System (QOLRS) is a means by which to measure, monitor, and report on the quality of life in Canadian municipalities. To address that challenge of administrative data collection across member municipalities the QOLRS technical team collaborated on the development of the Municipal Data Collection Tool (MDCT) which has become a key component of QOLRS' data acquisition methodology. Offered as a case study on administrative data collection, this paper argues that the recent launch of the MDCT has enabled the FCM to access reliable pan-Canadian municipal administrative data for the QOLRS.

Description:

Justice surveys represent a unique type of survey undertaken by Statistics Canada. While they all essentially use administrative data, Statistics Canada has had considerable input into the type of data that is collected as well as quality assurance methods guiding the collection of this data. This is true in the areas of policing, courts and corrections. The main crime survey, the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR), is the focus of this paper and was designed to measure the incidence of crime in Canadian society and its characteristics. The data is collected by the policing community in Canada and transmitted electronically to Statistics Canada. This paper will begin by providing an overview of the survey and its distinctive properties, such as the use of intermediaries (software vendors) that convert data from the police's information systems into the UCR survey format, following nationally defined data requirements. This level of consistency is uncommon for an administrative survey and permits a variety of opportunities for improving the overall data quality and capabilities of the survey. Various methods such as quality indicators and feedback reports are used on a regular basis and frequent two-way communication takes place with the respondents to correct existing data problems and to prevent future ones. We will discuss recent improvements to both the data itself and our collection methods that have enhanced the usability of the survey. Finally, future development of the survey will be discussed including some of the challenges that currently exist as well as those still to come.

Description:

In many countries, improved quality of economic statistics is one of the most important goals of the 21st century. First and foremost, the quality of National Accounts is in focus, regarding both annual and quarterly accounts. To achieve this goal, data quality regarding the largest enterprises is of vital importance. To assure that the quality of data for the largest enterprises is good, coherence analysis is an important tool. Coherence means that data from different sources fit together and give a consistent view of the development within these enterprises. Working with coherence analysis in an efficient way is normally a work-intensive task consisting mainly of collecting data from different sources and comparing them in a structured manner. Over the last two years, Statistics Sweden has made great progress in improving the routines for coherence analysis. An IT tool that collects data for the largest enterprises from a large number of sources and presents it in a structured and logical matter has been built, and a systematic approach to analyse data for National Accounts on a quarterly basis has been developed. The paper describes the work in both these areas and gives an overview of the IT tool and the agreed routines.

Description:

Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) prides itself in the accuracy and validity of data collected, processed and disseminated. The introduction of a Real Time Management System (RTMS) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) into field operations is aimed at enhancing the process of data collection and minimising errors with regard to locating sampled dwelling units and tracking material from one point in the survey chain to another.

The Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) is a pioneering project at Stats SA where the Master sample (MS) is linked to a GPS data base, where every record listed on the MS listing book has a corresponding GPS coordinate captured for it. These GPS points allows the Survey Officer to record spatially where different records are on the ground that are being listed (i.e. shops, houses, schools, churches etc.). The captured information is then linked to a shape file which populates where the structures are on the ground in relation to the manual listing records.

Description:

The Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS) provides an extensive set of data about Aboriginal (Métis, Inuit, and off-reserve First Nations) children under 6 years of age in urban, rural, and northern locations across Canada. The Aboriginal Children's Survey (ACS) was designed to provide a picture of the early development of Aboriginal children and the social and living conditions in which they are learning and growing.

The survey was developed by Statistics Canada and Aboriginal advisors from across the country and was conducted jointly with Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

Description: This is a toolkit intended to aid data producers and data users external to Statistics Canada.

Description:

This guide focuses on the following topic: Structural Type of Dwelling and Collectives variables. Provides information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2016 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts, talks about changes made to the 2016 Census, data quality and historical comparability, as well as comparison with other data sources. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Description:

The Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) serves as the highest-level governance tool for quality management at Statistics Canada. The QAF gives an overview of the quality management and risk mitigation strategies used by the Agency’s program areas. The QAF is used in conjunction with Statistics Canada management practices, such as those described in the Quality Guidelines.

Description: The Guide to Job Vacancy Statistics provides an overview of the structure of the survey and covers topics such as survey methodology, data quality as well as terms and definitions.

Description:

This report describes the quality indicators produced for the 2014 Survey of Household Spending. These quality indicators, such as coefficients of variation, nonresponse rates, slippage rates and imputation rates, help users interpret the survey data.

Description:

This overview document describes the conceptual underpinnings of the Integrated Business Statistics Program and explains how program components facilitate a more integrated approach to economic surveying at Statistics Canada.

Description:

The Research Data Centres (RDCs) Information and Technical Bulletin (ITB) is a forum by which Statistics Canada analysts and the research community can inform each other on survey data uses and methodological techniques. Articles in the ITB focus on data analysis and modelling, data management, and best or ineffective statistical, computational, and scientific practices. Further, ITB topics will include essays on data content, implications of questionnaire wording, comparisons of datasets, reviews on methodologies and their application, data peculiarities, problematic data and solutions, and explanations of innovative tools using RDC surveys and relevant software. All of these essays may provide advice and detailed examples outlining commands, habits, tricks and strategies used to make problem-solving easier for the RDC user.

The main aims of the ITB are:

- the advancement and dissemination of knowledge surrounding Statistics Canada's data; - the exchange of ideas among the RDC-user community;- the support of new users; - the co-operation with subject matter experts and divisions within Statistics Canada.

The ITB is interested in quality articles that are worth publicizing throughout the research community, and that will add value to the quality of research produced at Statistics Canada's RDCs.

Description:

This paper introduces and explains modifications made to the Labour Force Survey estimates in January 2015. Some of these modifications include the adjustment of all LFS estimates to reflect population counts based on the 2011 Census and includes updates to 2011 Geography classification system.

Description:

This report describes the quality indicators produced for the 2013 Survey of Household Spending. These quality indicators, such as coefficients of variation, nonresponse rates, slippage rates and imputation rates, help users interpret the survey data.

Description:

The 2011 NHS Aboriginal Peoples Technical Report deals with: (1) Aboriginal ancestry, (2) Aboriginal identity, (3) Registered Indian status and (4) First Nation/Indian band membership.

The report contains explanations of concepts, data quality, historical comparability and comparability to other sources, as well as information on data collection, processing and dissemination.