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The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of existing methods and techniques making use of personal identifiers to support record linkage. Record linkage can be loosely defined as a methodology for manipulating and / or transforming personal identifiers from individual data records from one or more operational databases and subsequently attempting to match these personal identifiers to create a composite record about an individual. Record linkage is not intended to uniquely identify individuals for operational purposes; however, it does provide probabilistic matches of varying degrees of reliability for use in statistical reporting. Techniques employed in record linkage may also be of use for investigative purposes to help narrow the field of search against existing databases when some form of personal identification information exists.

In 1999, as part of its General Social Survey program, Statistics Canada conducted a survey on victimization and public perceptions of crime and the justice system. It was the third time that the General Social Survey (GSS) had examined victimization - previous surveys were conducted in 1993 and 1988.

For the 1999 survey, interviews were conducted by telephone with approximately 26,000 people, aged 15 and older, living in the 10 provinces. Respondents were asked for their opinions concerning the level of crime in their neighbourhood, their fear of crime and their views concerning the performance of the justice system. They were also asked about their attitudes toward sentencing adult and young offenders. Respondents were randomly presented with one of four hypothetical situations for which they were asked to choose "prison" or "non-prison". Respondents who selected prison sentences were given a follow-up question that asked them whether a sentence of one year of probation and 200 hours of community work was an acceptable alternative to the prison sentence.

This Juristat examines public attitudes toward sentencing adult and young offenders. It also analyzes public attitudes toward four sectors of the justice system including, the police, the criminal courts, the prison and parole systems.

This article examines whether the education levels of graduates surpass the needs of employers, and to what extent.

This article provides an analysis of the employment and earnings patterns of recent postsecondary graduates, based on three waves of the National Graduates Surveys.

This Juristat outlines the characteristics of criminal harassment incidents as well as the characteristics of the accused and victim for 1999, and identifies trends over the past five years. (Trend data are only available for the five-year period from 1995 to 1999.) This Juristat updates a similar Juristat written in 1996 using information collected from police forces and adult criminal courts to review the charges laid and sentences imposed for cases involving criminal harassment.

There are many different types of stalkers. However, most victims of criminal harassment know their accused quite well and, in many instances, the stalker and victim were involved in a previous relationship.

Statistics Canada publishes several measures of farm income, each produced for a different purpose. This bulletin describes the concepts behind these different measures, the methods by which the measures are constructed, and the uses for which they were designed.

Canada's ports handled a record 382.0 million tonnes (Mt.) of cargo in 1999 and a record of 2.2 million TEURS (twenty-foot-equivalent units) of containers.

Third quarter 1999 operating ratios for top carriers improved by one point over the same period one year earlier to 0.93 but were unchanged in the fourth quarter (0.94). Average revenue per carrier grew by 3% in the third quarter and 4% in the fourth quarter.

This study looks at those who voluntarily work part time, as well as their reasons for doing so, their levels of work-related stress, and their job characteristics.

This Bulletin provides recent information on the performance and funding of Federal Government Expenditures on Scientific Activities, 2000-2001. The statistics presented are derived from the survey of the science and technology (S&T) activities of Federal departments and agencies. According to international convention, S&T is divided into two fields; Natural Sciences and Engineering (NSE) and Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). These fields of science are further divided into Research and Development (R&D) and Related Scientific Activities (RSA).

The third edition of Canadian culture in perspective: a statistical overview, provides a comprehensive statistical portrait of the health and vitality of cultural activities and industries in Canada. This compendium incorporates data from all surveys in Statistics Canada's Culture Statistics Program, as well as data from other internal and external sources, enabling readers to track various themes and trends over time.

This edition contains sections on: the economic impact of the culture sector, culture activities by tourists and the international trade position of the culture sector; on social dimensions of culture, including characteristics of the cultural labour force, philanthropic behaviour, and the consumers of cultural goods and services; and on various sectors such as heritage, the performing arts and festivals, visual arts and libraries. It also explores ownership and content issues in the culture industries (publishing, film, broadcasting and music).

Canada's ports handled a record 382.0 million tonnes (Mt.) of cargo in 1999 and a record of 2.2 million TEURS (twenty-foot-equivalent units) of containers.

Third quarter 1999 operating ratios for top carriers improved by one point over the same period one year earlier to 0.93 but were unchanged in the fourth quarter (0.94). Average revenue per carrier grew by 3% in the third quarter and 4% in the fourth quarter.

Retirement issues have risen to the forefront of socio-economic debate in Canada through the nineties and will likely gain importance as we enter the new millennium. Employer pension plans are one of the primary programs in place to provide workers with income after retirement.

Pension plans in Canada: statistical highlights and key tables presents information on the terms, conditions and membership on all employers sponsored pension plans in Canada. This supplement to publication Pension plans in Canada (74-401-XIB) provides analysis and data on registered pension plans. The topics covered include province of employment, labour force/paid workers coverage, type of plan (defined benefit and defined contributions), size of plan, public and private sectors, contributory and non-contributory plans, employee and employer contributions.

This publication presents current and constant price estimates of provincial gross domestic product (GDP) for over 50 industries covering the entire Canadian economy, including aggregates and special industry groupings. The document also includes a comprehensive analytical review of the economy of each province and territory with summary text, tables and charts.

The Vancouver-San Francisco market experienced the largest year-over-year increase in passengers of all the major markets between 1997 and 1998. Toronto-Milwaukee was the mid-sized market which experienced the largest year-over-year increase, with 25,520 more passengers in 1998 than 1997.

The volume of air travel between the Canadian cities and American states presented in Text Table 2.1 generally reflects the underlying large inter-city markets.

The Canada-United States Open Skies Agreement, which was signed on February 24 1995, transformed the regulatory environment for air services between two countries. Text Table 3.1 shows the changes in the level of travel between the U.S. and the eight most-frequented Canadian cities since 1995.

Scheduled air trips to or from Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta represented a greater proportion of total Canada-United States air travel than residents of these provinces represented of the total Canadian population. Alberta residents represented 9.6% of Canada's total population in 1998, while Alberta represented 11.8% of the total number of Canada-U.S. air travellers. Even more markedly, the populations of Ontario and British Columbia represented 37.7% and 13.2% respectively of the total Canadian population, while Ontario represented 44.4% of total Canada-U.S. travelers and British Columbia represented 20.8%.

North American transportation in figures provides a comprehensive set of comparable statistical indicators of the use, performance and impact of transportation in North America. It includes over 90 different data tables, supported by figures, maps and extensive technical documentation describing data categories and definitions relating to each country, that is, Canada, Mexico and the United States. The report covers a wide variety of transportation subjects across the three countries: including transportation and the economy; safety; merchandise trade; freight activity; passenger travel; infrastructure; and transportation energy and environment.

This release provides data on the Research and development activities of the private non-profit sector. Although the contribution of this sector to the national R&D effort is small in dollar terms, its impact, particularly in the university sector, is significant.Questionnaires were mailed to 94 private non-profit organizations thought to be supporting Research and development activities. Twenty organizations reported performing Research and development.

The international Adult Literacy Survey of 1994 is an important source of information about the literacy levels of Canadians as well as the factors that can explain the disparities between certain sub-populations. The current study shows and tries to explain some of the disparities between Francophones and Anglophones in Canada.

The higher education sector is composed of "all universities, colleges of technology and other institutes of post-secondary education, whatever their source of finance or legal status. It also includes all research institutes, experimental stations and clinics operating under the direct control of, or administered by, or associated with higher education establishments."

Gross domestic expenditures on research and development (GERD) represents total R&D expenditures performed in a country's national territory during a given year. GERD includes research and development performed within a country and funded from abroad but excludes payments sent abroad for research and development performed in other countries.

This report provides an overview of residential, business and 'other' break and enter (B & E) offences in Canada, including trends at the national, provincial and metropolitan area levels, as well as characteristics of B & E incidents, accused persons and victims. In addition the offence known as "home invasion" is also discussed. Data are examined from both the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey and the General Social Survey (GSS) on victimization. Data from both youth and adult court are examined to look at the types of sentences being given to persons convicted of B & E offences.

This paper attempts to quantify the magnitude of economic disparity among Canadian provinces. It uses the average annual earning of a province as an indicator of economic well-being for that province.

In this paper, we use census tract data to analyse changes in neighbourhood income inequality and residential economic segregation in the eight largest Canadian cities during the 1980-95 period. Is the income gap between richer and poorer neighbourhoods rising? Are high and low-income families increasingly clustered in economically homogeneous neighbourhoods? The main results are an elaboration of the spatial implications of the well documented changes that have occurred in family income and earnings inequality since 1980. We find that between neighbourhood family income (post-transfer/pre-tax) inequality rose in all cities driven by a substantial rise in neighbourhood (employment) earnings inequality. Real average earnings fell, sometimes dramatically, in low-income neighbourhoods in virtually all cities while rising moderately in higher income neighbourhoods. Strikingly, social transfers, which were the main factor stabilizing national level income inequality in the face of rising earnings inequality, had only a modest impact on changes in neighbourhood inequality. Changes in the neighbourhood distribution of earnings signal significant change in the social and economic character of many neighbourhoods. Employment was increasingly concentrated in higher income communities and unemployment in lower income neighbourhoods. Finally, we ask whether neighbourhood inequality rose primarily as a result of rising family income inequality in the city as a whole or because families were increasingly sorting themselves into "like" neighbourhoods so that neighbourhoods were becoming more economically homogeneous (economic "segregation"). We find that economic spatial segregation increased in all cities and was the major factor behind rising neighbourhood inequality in four of the eight cities. A general rise in urban family income inequality was the main factor in the remaining four cities.

Historically, female employment rates in rural areas have been significantly below the rates for women in urban areas (Bollman, 1991; Fuguitt, Brown and Beale, 1989). The objective of this paper is to explore some of the factors associated with these rural-urban differences in female employment rates.

Based on 1997 results from the Traveller Accommodation Survey, it profiles Canada's hotels and motor hotels industry. Relative measures of the industry's characteristics, performance and workforce are presented with some information specific to small, medium, and large-sized establishments. The data indicate that, for a variety of reasons, large-sized hotels and motor hotels outperform other establishments in the industry.

This article looks at Canadians' incomes and expeditures in the 20th century.

This paper states how SN is preparing for a new era in the making of statistics, as it is triggered by technological and methodological developments. An essential feature of the turn to the new era is the farewell to the stovepipe way of data processing. The paper discusses how new technological and methodological tools will affect processes and their organization. Special emphasis is put on one of the major chances and challenges the new tools offer: establishing coherence in the content of statistics and in the presentation to users.

The Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) links immigration and taxation administrative records into a comprehensive source of data on the labour market behaviour of the landed immigrant population in Canada. It covers the period 1980 to 1995 and will be updated annually starting with the 1996 tax year in 1999. Statistics Canada manages the database on behalf of a federal-provincial consortium led by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The IMDB was created specifically to respond to the need for detailed and reliable data on the performance and impact of immigration policies and programs. It is the only source of data at Statistics Canada that provides a direct link between immigration policy levers and the economic performance of immigrants. The paper will examine the issues related to the development of a longitudinal database combining administrative records to support policy-relevant research and analysis. Discussion will focus specifically on the methodological, conceptual, analytical and privacy issues involved in the creation and ongoing development of this database. The paper will also touch briefly on research findings, which illustrate the policy outcome links the IMDB allows policy-makers to investigate.

One method of enriching survey data is to supplement information collected directly from the respondent with that obtained from administrative systems. The aims of such a practice include being able to collect data which might not otherwise be possible, provision of better quality information for data items which respondents may not be able to report accurately (or not at all) reduction of respondent load, and maximising the utility of information held in administrative systems. Given the direct link with administrative information, the data set resulting from such techniques is potentially a powerful basis for policy-relevant analysis and evaluation. However, the processes involved in effectively combining data from different sources raise a number of challenges which need to be addressed by the parties involved. These include issues associated with privacy, data linking, data quality, estimation, and dissemination.

We estimate the parameters of a stochastic model for labour force careers involving distributions of correlated durations employed, unemployed (with and without job search) and not in the labour force. If the model is to account for sub-annual labour force patterns as well as advancement towards retirement, then no single data source is adequate to inform it. However, it is possible to build up an approximation from a number of different sources.

The U.S. Manufacturing Plant Ownership Change Database (OCD) was constructed using plant-level data taken from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). It contains data on all manufacturing plants that have experienced ownership change at least once during the period 1963-92. This paper reports the status of the OCD and discuss its research possibilities. For an empirical demonstration, data taken from the database are used to study the effects of ownership changes on plant closure.

Objective: To create an occupational surveillance system by collecting, linking, evaluating and disseminating data relating to occupation and mortality with the ultimate aim of reducing or preventing excess risk among workers and the general population.

Time series studies have shown associations between air pollution concentrations and morbidity and mortality. These studies have largely been conducted within single cities, and with varying methods. Critics of these studies have questioned the validity of the data sets used and the statistical techniques applied to them; the critics have noted inconsistencies in findings among studies and even in independent re-analyses of data from the same city. In this paper we review some of the statistical methods used to analyze a subset of a national data base of air pollution, mortality and weather assembled during the National Morbidity and Mortality Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS).

Radon, a naturally occurring gas found at some level in most homes, is an established risk factor for human lung cancer. The U.S. National Research Council (1999) has recently completed a comprehensive evaluation of the health risks of residential exposure to radon, and developed models for projecting radon lung cancer risks in the general population. This analysis suggests that radon may play a role in the etiology of 10-15% of all lung cancer cases in the United States, although these estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty. In this article, we present a partial analysis of uncertainty and variability in estimates of lung cancer risk due to residential exposure to radon in the United States using a general framework for the analysis of uncertainty and variability that we have developed previously. Specifically, we focus on estimates of the age-specific excess relative risk (ERR) and lifetime relative risk (LRR), both of which vary substantially among individuals.

There are many different situations in which one or more files need to be linked. With one file the purpose of the linkage would be to locate duplicates within the file. When there are two files, the linkage is done to identify the units that are the same on both files and thus create matched pairs. Often records that need to be linked do not have a unique identifier. Hierarchical record linkage, probabilistic record linkage and statistical matching are three methods that can be used when there is no unique identifier on the files that need to be linked. We describe the major differences between the methods. We consider how to choose variables to link, how to prepare files for linkage and how the links are identified. As well, we review tips and tricks used when linking files. Two examples, the probabilistic record linkage used in the reverse record check and the hierarchical record linkage of the Business Number (BN) master file to the Statistical Universe File (SUF) of unincorporated tax filers (T1) will be illustrated.

As the availability of both health utilization and outcome information becomes increasingly important to health care researchers and policy makers, the ability to link person-specific health data becomes a critical objective. This type of linkage of population-based administrative health databases has been realized in British Columbia. The database was created by constructing an historical file of all persons registered with the health care system, and then by probabilistically linking various program files to this 'coordinating' file. The first phase of development included the linkage of hospital discharge data, physician billing data, continuing care data, data about drug costs for the elderly, births data and deaths data. The second phase of development has seen the addition data sources external to the Ministry of Health including cancer incidence data, workers' compensation data, and income assistance data.