Analysis

Description:

This paper will describe the multiple imputation of income in the National Health Interview Survey and discuss the methodological issues involved. In addition, the paper will present empirical summaries of the imputations as well as results of a Monte Carlo evaluation of inferences based on multiply imputed income items.

Analysts of health data are often interested in studying relationships between income and health. The National Health Interview Survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides a rich source of data for studying such relationships. However, the nonresponse rates on two key income items, an individual's earned income and a family's total income, are over 20%. Moreover, these nonresponse rates appear to be increasing over time. A project is currently underway to multiply impute individual earnings and family income along with some other covariates for the National Health Interview Survey in 1997 and subsequent years.

There are many challenges in developing appropriate multiple imputations for such large-scale surveys. First, there are many variables of different types, with different skip patterns and logical relationships. Second, it is not known what types of associations will be investigated by the analysts of multiply imputed data. Finally, some variables, such as family income, are collected at the family level and others, such as earned income, are collected at the individual level. To make the imputations for both the family- and individual-level variables conditional on as many predictors as possible, and to simplify modelling, we are using a modified version of the sequential regression imputation method described in Raghunathan et al. ( Survey Methodology, 2001).

Besides issues related to the hierarchical nature of the imputations just described, there are other methodological issues of interest such as the use of transformations of the income variables, the imposition of restrictions on the values of variables, the general validity of sequential regression imputation and, even more generally, the validity of multiple-imputation inferences for surveys with complex sample designs.

Description:

Missing data are a constant problem in large-scale surveys. Such incompleteness is usually dealt with either by restricting the analysis to the cases with complete records or by imputing, for each missing item, an efficiently estimated value. The deficiencies of these approaches will be discussed in this paper, especially in the context of estimating a large number of quantities. The main part of the paper will describe two examples of analyses using multiple imputation.

In the first, the International Labour Organization (ILO) employment status is imputed in the British Labour Force Survey by a Bayesian bootstrap method. It is an adaptation of the hot-deck method, which seeks to fully exploit the auxiliary information. Important auxiliary information is given by the previous ILO status, when available, and the standard demographic variables.

Missing data can be interpreted more generally, as in the framework of the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. The second example is from the Scottish House Condition Survey, and its focus is on the inconsistency of the surveyors. The surveyors assess the sampled dwelling units on a large number of elements or features of the dwelling, such as internal walls, roof and plumbing, that are scored and converted to a summarizing 'comprehensive repair cost.' The level of inconsistency is estimated from the discrepancies between the pairs of assessments of doubly surveyed dwellings. The principal research questions concern the amount of information that is lost as a result of the inconsistency and whether the naive estimators that ignore the inconsistency are unbiased. The problem is solved by multiple imputation, generating plausible scores for all the dwellings in the survey.

Description:

In the United States, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is linked to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) at the primary sampling unit level (the same counties, but not necessarily the same persons, are in both surveys). The NHANES examines about 5,000 persons per year, while the NHIS samples about 100,000 persons per year. In this paper, we present and develop properties of models that allow NHIS and administrative data to be used as auxiliary information for estimating quantities of interest in the NHANES. The methodology, related to Fay-Herriot (1979) small-area models and to calibration estimators in Deville and Sarndal (1992), accounts for the survey designs in the error structure.

Description:

Cancer surveillance research requires accurate estimates of risk factors at the small area level. These risk factors are often obtained from surveys such as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) or the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Unfortunately, no one population-based survey provides ideal prevalence estimates of such risk factors. One strategy is to combine information from multiple surveys, using the complementary strengths of one survey to compensate for the weakness of the other. The NHIS is a nationally representative, face-to-face survey with a high response rate; however, it cannot produce state or substate estimates of risk factor prevalence because sample sizes are too small. The BRFSS is a state-level telephone survey that excludes non-telephone households and has a lower response rate, but does provide reasonable sample sizes in all states and many counties. Several methods are available for constructing small-area estimators that combine information from both the NHIS and the BRFSS, including direct estimators, estimators under hierarchical Bayes models and model-assisted estimators. In this paper, we focus on the latter, constructing generalized regression (GREG) and 'minimum-distance' estimators and using existing and newly developed small-area smoothing techniques to smooth the resulting estimators.

Description:

This study takes a look at the modelling methods used for public health data. Public health has a renewed interest in the impact of the environment on health. Ecological or contextual studies ideally investigate these relationships using public health data augmented with environmental characteristics in multilevel or hierarchical models. In these models, individual respondents in health data are the first level and community data are the second level. Most public health data use complex sample survey designs, which require analyses accounting for the clustering, nonresponse, and poststratification to obtain representative estimates of prevalence of health risk behaviours.

This study uses the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a state-specific US health risk factor surveillance system conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which assesses health risk factors in over 200,000 adults annually. BRFSS data are now available at the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level and provide quality health information for studies of environmental effects. MSA-level analyses combining health and environmental data are further complicated by joint requirements of the survey sample design and the multilevel analyses.

We compare three modelling methods in a study of physical activity and selected environmental factors using BRFSS 2000 data. Each of the methods described here is a valid way to analyse complex sample survey data augmented with environmental information, although each accounts for the survey design and multilevel data structure in a different manner and is thus appropriate for slightly different research questions.

Description:

The objective of this study was to analyse the influence of community on individual health. The new Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) was used to derive individual health variables for Canadian residents aged 18 or older while community-level data were obtained from the Canadian 1996 Census of Population. Weighted logistic multilevel models and principal component analysis were used to analyse these data. After controlling for individual variables, there was little variation between communities. However, the influence of the community was more important for people with low family income than those with higher income.

Description:

This paper examines the simulation study that was conducted to assess the sampling scheme designed for the World Health Organization (WHO) Injection Safety Assessment Survey. The objective of this assessment survey is to determine whether facilities in which injections are given meet the necessary safety requirements for injection administration, equipment, supplies and waste disposal. The main parameter of interest is the proportion of health care facilities in a country that have safe injection practices.

The objective of this simulation study was to assess the accuracy and precision of the proposed sampling design. To this end, two artificial populations were created based on the two African countries of Niger and Burkina Faso, in which the pilot survey was tested. To create a wide variety of hypothetical populations, the assignment of whether a health care facility was safe or not was based on the different combinations of the population proportion of safe health care facilities in the country, the homogeneity of the districts in the country with respect to injection safety, and whether the health care facility was located in an urban or rural district.

Using the results of the simulation, a multi-factor analysis of variance was used to determine which factors affect the outcome measures of absolute bias, standard error and mean-squared error.

Description:

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second cause of cancer deaths in Canada. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) have shown the efficacy of screening using faecal occult blood tests (FOBT). A comprehensive evaluation of the costs and consequences of CRC screening for the Canadian population is required before implementing such a program. This paper evaluates whether or not the CRC screening is cost-effective. The results of these simulations will be provided to the Canadian National Committee on Colorectal Cancer Screening to help formulate national policy recommendations for CRC screening.

Statistics Canada's Population Health Microsimulation Model was updated to incorporate a comprehensive CRC screening module based on Canadian data and RCT efficacy results. The module incorporated sensitivity and specificity of FOBT and colonoscopy, participation rates, incidence, staging, diagnostic and therapeutic options, disease progression, mortality and direct health care costs for different screening scenarios. Reproducing the mortality reduction observed in the Funen screening trial validated the model.

Description:

Categorical outcomes, such as binary, ordinal and nominal responses, occur often in survey research. Logistic regression investigates the relationship between such categorical responses variables and a set of explanatory variables. The LOGISTIC procedure can be used to perform a logistic analysis on data from a random sample. However, this approach is not valid if the data come from other sample designs, such as complex survey designs with stratification, clustering and/or unequal weighting. In these cases, specialized techniques must be applied in order to produce the appropriate estimates and standard errors.

The SURVEYLOGISTIC procedure, experimental in Version 9, brings logistic regression for survey data to the SAS System and delivers much of the functionality of the LOGISTIC procedure. This paper describes the methodological approach and applications for this new software.

Description:

Some of the most commonly used statistical models are fitted using maximum likelihood (ML) or some extension of ML. Stata's ML command provides researchers and data analysts with a tool to develop estimation commands to fit their models using their data. Such models may include multiple equations, clustered observations, sampling weights and other survey design characteristics. These elements are discussed in this paper.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Using data from the Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) and the Census of Population, 2021, this infographic provides information on enrolment in Canadian public postsecondary institutions for transgender and non-binary people.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: The infographic uses data from the integrated file of the Postsecondary Student Information System, the 2016 Census, the 2021 Census and the T1 Family File to compare the job quality of Indigenous graduates with a bachelor's degree with that of non-racialized and non-Indigenous graduates two years after graduation. Job quality indicators include employment income, unionization rate, and employer pension plan coverage rate.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: With an increase in the number of international students and a greater need for affordable housing, questions have arisen about international students housing experiences. This article examines international students’ prevalence of living in unsuitable housing across municipalities enumerated in the 2021 Census of Population long-form questionnaire. The report also presents the rates of unsuitable housing for international students from different source countries and provides comparisons with Canadian-born students.

Description: Selecting immigrants with high levels of education increases their chances of economic success. Immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher are more adaptable to changes in the labour market and have steeper growth in employment earnings than those with a trades or high school education. However, many immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher have occupations that underutilize their skills, which can reduce their employment income, productivity and well-being. This article updates previously documented trends in education–occupation mismatch with census data from 2001 to 2021.

Description: It is well documented that earnings vary considerably by population group (White, Black, Latin American, etc.). One of the possible reasons may be the fact that educational attainment also varies considerably by population group. Currently, there is a lack of information on the educational pathways of individuals from various population groups who began a postsecondary education program. This article fills this gap by documenting various aspects of the postsecondary experience of different population groups with regard to bachelor’s degree programs.

Description: The impact of immigration on the destination country is contingent not only on the number of immigrants admitted but also on how many of them choose to stay and actively engage in the labour market. This article analyzes the active presence of adult immigrants since the 1990s. Active presence refers to the extent to which immigrants who were admitted to Canada during a specific period actively engage in Canadian society within a specific timeframe.

Description: Headline inflation in Canada reached a 40-year high in 2022. Rising prices reduced the purchasing power of people whose incomes were not keeping pace with inflation and the current high inflation in Canada, as well as in many other countries, may be caused by both demand and supply factors. This article examines whether the current high inflation in Canada is demand–pull or supply–push.

Description: The pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the Canadian economy. This impact was uneven across different workers and businesses. However, there is little information available on how businesses were affected by and survived through the pandemic according to the characteristics of their owners, especially those owned by certain groups such as women and immigrants. This article uses a linkage of the monthly business openings and closures with the Canadian Employer-Employee Dynamics Database and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy to study the survival rate and employment growth of businesses by gender, and immigrant status of owners.

Description: This article explores trends in patent applications made by Canadian-resident businesses for advanced technologies from 2001 to 2019, drawing on Eurostat's aggregation of high-tech patents. Approximately one-third of applications fall under high-tech categories, the bulk of which were associated with Communication, Computer, and Automated business equipment technologies. While these fields saw growth until 2012, a subsequent decline occurred, notably in Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing. Biotechnology, Semiconductors, and Lasers showed limited dynamism, while aviation technology applications surged by nearly twentyfold over the period.

Description: Digital Insights brings together a variety of data from across Statistics Canada and other sources to provide insights and analysis on the digital economy and society in Canada. The topics covered include: e-commerce, digital trade, cyber security and cybercrime, and the impacts of Internet and other technology use on the Canadian economy and society.

Description: This technical paper describes the collection of food price data and the methodologies that are used to provide Canadians with accurate and timely food inflation data in both the CPI and the monthly average retail prices table.

Description: This study compares the Government of Canada’s direct and indirect measures to support R&D, as captured by business innovation and growth support (BIGS) programs and the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive program. BIGS and SR&ED are two central instruments that the Canadian government uses to stimulate R&D expenditures in the business sector.

Description:

This demolinguistic portrait of the French-speaking population in Canada was undertaken with the financial support of Canadian Heritage's Official Languages Secretariat, prepared by the Statistics Canada's Language Statistics Section.

This study paints a general statistical portrait of the official-language minority in Canada based on data from the Census of Population and the Survey on the Vitality of Official-language Minorities in Canada, conducted in 2006. The purpose of such a portrait is to present a set of characteristics, behaviours and perceptions of the official-language minority population, exploiting the analytical opportunities contained in the data.

Description:

The Canadian Economy in Transition is a series of new analytical reports that investigate the dynamics of industrial change in the Canadian economy. Many of these studies focus on the growth and development of industries that are often described as vanguards of the new economy, such as information and communications technology industries and science-based industries (heavy investors in research and development and human capital). Other studies examine the role that knowledge workers play in Canada's industrial evolution. In addition, future studies will investigate productivity performance in different industrial sectors.

This new series brings together a coherent set of research reports that provide users with a wide variety of empirical perspectives on the economy's changing industrial structure. These perspectives include the dynamics of productivity, profitability, employment, output, investment, occupational structure and industrial geography.

Description:

The Economic Analysis Research Paper Series provides the circulation of research conducted by the staff of National Accounts and Analytical Studies, visiting fellows and academic associates. The research paper series is meant to stimulate discussion on a range of topics including the impact of the new economy; productivity issues; firm profitability; technology usage; the effect of financing on firm growth; depreciation functions; the use of satellite accounts; savings rates; leasing; firm dynamics; hedonic estimations; diversification patterns; investment patterns; the differences in the performance of small and large, or domestic and multinational firms; and purchasing power parity estimates. Readers of the series are encouraged to contact the authors with comments, criticisms and suggestions.

The primary distribution medium for the papers is the Internet. These papers can be downloaded from the Internet at www.statcan.gc.ca for free. Papers in the series are distributed to Statistics Canada Regional Offices and provincial statistical focal points.

All papers in the Economic Analysis Series go through institutional and peer review to ensure that they conform to Statistics Canada's mandate as a government statistical agency and adhere to generally accepted standards of good professional practice.

The papers in the series often include results derived from multivariate analysis or other statistical techniques. It should be recognized that the results of these analyses are subject to uncertainty in the reported estimates.

The level of uncertainty will depend on several factors: the nature of the functional form used in the multivariate analysis; the type of econometric technique employed; the appropriateness of the statistical assumptions embedded in the model or technique; the comprehensiveness of the variables included in the analysis; and the accuracy of the data that are utilized. The peer group review process is meant to ensure that the papers in the series have followed accepted standards to minimize problems in each of these areas.

Description:

This topic presents data on the income of individuals, families, and households of Canada for the year 2010, including the composition of income, earnings and low-income prevalence data. The data also include the family and household incomes of Canadians by characteristics, family structure, household type and geography, as well as the total income and earnings levels of certain population groups (e.g., immigrants). The composition of income includes market income and income from government sources, and presents detailed components.

This topic also presents data on dwelling characteristics, including number of rooms and bedrooms, condition of dwelling, period of construction, condominium status, value of dwelling, and structural type of dwelling. Data on households are also presented, including household maintainer, housing tenure, housing subsidy, housing suitability and shelter costs.

Analytical products

Two analytical documents provide analysis on the key findings in the data, and are complemented with the short articles found in NHS in Brief and the data in the NHS Focus on Geography Series.

Data products

The NHS Profile is one data product that provides a statistical overview of user selected geographic areas based on several detailed variables and/or groups of variables. Other data products include data tables which represent a series of cross tabulations ranging in complexity and are available for various levels of geography.

Description:

This on-line report summarizes research and development (R&D) activities performed and funded by Canadian business enterprises and industrial research institutes and associations. The data are used, for instance, to plan and evaluate R&D tax incentive programs, to provide indicators of the state of industrial innovation and to complement national aggregates for scientific R&D expenditures and personnel. Among the topics covered are current and capital expenditures on research and development, energy R&D expenditures by area of technology, R&D expenditures as a percentage of company revenues, sources of funds for intramural R&D, personnel engaged in R&D, and foreign payments made and received for technological services. Most historical tables are presented for the latest five years and disaggregated by 46 industrial groupings, size of R&D program, employment size, revenue size, country of control, and by province.

Description:

This paper surveys the history of Statistics Canada's Consumer Price Index (CPI) from its origins to today. It discusses changes in the construction, scope and uses of the CPI within the context of historical events.

Description:

This reference publication on productivity in Canada shows how productivity trends affect Canadian living standards and measures the relative productivity performance of Canada and other countries. Its articles cover productivity and related issues, and it illuminates the sources underlying economic growth in Canada.

Description:

The Canadian Income Survey (CIS) is a cross-sectional survey developed to assess the economic well-being of individuals and families in Canada. It provides a portrait of the income and income sources of Canadians, with their individual and household characteristics.

Description:

Many of the 60 or so Aboriginal languages in Canada are considered endangered to varying degrees for their long-term survival. Assessing language vitality or endangerment through the measurement of various factors can provide useful information to help ensure the continuity of a language. This paper illustrates how the 2011 Census of Population and the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) can be used to measure some of the factors that provide information related to the vitality of Aboriginal languages.

Description:

Canadian Demographics at a glance is designed to gather a maximum of demographic information in a single document, giving users an easily and quickly accessible up-to-date picture of the Canadian population. It presents data on demographic growth, fertility, mortality, migratory movements, aging and ethno-cultural diversity of the population in the form of tables and graphs accompanied by a brief analytical commentary.