Analysis

Description: Nonprobability samples are quick and low-cost and have become popular for some types of survey research. Kennedy, Mercer and Lau examine data quality issues associated with opt-in nonprobability samples frequently used in the United States. They show that the estimates from these samples have serious problems that go beyond representativeness. A total survey error perspective is important for evaluating all types of surveys.

Description: Statistical approaches developed for nonprobability samples generally focus on nonrandom selection as the primary reason survey respondents might differ systematically from the target population. Well-established theory states that in these instances, by conditioning on the necessary auxiliary variables, selection can be rendered ignorable and survey estimates will be free of bias. But this logic rests on the assumption that measurement error is nonexistent or small. In this study we test this assumption in two ways. First, we use a large benchmarking study to identify subgroups for which errors in commercial, online nonprobability samples are especially large in ways that are unlikely due to selection effects. Then we present a follow-up study examining one cause of the large errors: bogus responding (i.e., survey answers that are fraudulent, mischievous or otherwise insincere). We find that bogus responding, particularly among respondents identifying as young or Hispanic, is a significant and widespread problem in commercial, online nonprobability samples, at least in the United States. This research highlights the need for statisticians working with commercial nonprobability samples to address bogus responding and issues of representativeness – not just the latter.

Description: This paper is an introduction to the special issue on the use of nonprobability samples featuring three papers that were presented at the 29^th Morris Hansen Lecture by Courtney Kennedy, Yan Li and Jean-François Beaumont.

Description: Every year, Statistics Canada collects data from hundreds of surveys. As the amount of data gathered increases, Statistics Canada has introduced infographics to help people, business owners, academics, and management at all levels, understand key information derived from the data. Infographics can be used to quickly communicate a message, to simplify the presentation of large amounts of data, to see data patterns and relationships, and to monitor changes in variables over time.

These infographics will provide a quick overview of Statistics Canada survey data.

Description: The journal publishes articles dealing with various aspects of statistical development relevant to a statistical agency, such as design issues in the context of practical constraints, use of different data sources and collection techniques, total survey error, survey evaluation, research in survey methodology, time series analysis, seasonal adjustment, demographic studies, data integration, estimation and data analysis methods, and general survey systems development. The emphasis is placed on the development and evaluation of specific methodologies as applied to data collection or the data themselves.

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: This report presents the results of the population projections by age group and sex for Canada, the provinces and territories. These projections are based on assumptions that take into account the most recent trends relating to components of population growth, particularly fertility, mortality, immigration, emigration and interprovincial migration.

The detailed data tables are available in CODR: tables 1710005701 and 1710005801.

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: This infographic provides estimates on health care workers' stress, alcohol consumption and positive health behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. Estimates are provided across three primary health care worker groups: nurses, physicians, and Personal Support Workers/Care Aides (PSWs/CAs).

Description: Many aspects of Canadian society affect and are affected by climate change. This presentation synthesizes recent research examining the impact of climate change on Canadian society (economy, labour, and health) as well as adaptation and mitigation measures to combat climate change.

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: StatCan released new analysis into the online culture our kids are growing up in, and it’s far from the best of all possible worlds: misinformation, bullying, violence… and worse.

Analyst Rachel Tsitomeneas joins us to dive into the findings.

Description: This infographic explores ecosystem services, which provide many benefits to society. The infographic provides a visual representation of the three main types of ecosystem services – provisioning services, regulating and maintenance services and cultural services.

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: This infographic investigates sandwich caregiving in Canada in 2022, defined as providing care in the past 12 months to both children under 15 years old and care-dependent adults and youth over 15 years old with a long-term condition or disability. The infographic explores the prevalence of sandwich caregiving, the types of relationships involved, and the impacts of this type of caregiving.

Description: In recent years, more economic immigrants entered Canada via the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) than through any other immigration program. This article examines differences among provinces in the growth and importance of the PNP and the characteristics of provincial nominees and is part of a series examining various aspects of the PNP. The series discusses the expansion of the program, differences among provinces, provincial retention rates, trends in earnings and the occupations of provincial nominees, both nationally and provincially.

Description: Barriers to important milestones and traditional adulthood transitions have intensified in Canada. Sustained food inflation, elevated housing prices, and increasingly unaffordable rental costs across much of the country are casting a shadow over the middle-class dream for many households—and, in particular, for young families. This article provides an overview of household balance sheets and key financial metrics for young families as they adjust to current market conditions and begin to build financial resilience.

Description: Temporary residents constitute an important supply of labour for the Canadian economy. However, some of them do not work in a given year, even when holding a valid work permit. This article estimates the share of temporary residents who had paid employment but were “weakly attached” to the Canadian labour market in 2019.

Description: Research generally supports the idea that technological change has favoured the demand for workers in occupations requiring higher levels of education and skills and negatively affected employment in occupations requiring lower skill levels. This article assesses the changes over the past two decades in the occupational skill level of employment in Canada, with a focus on the role of immigration in the changing occupational structure.

Description: Record linkage aims at identifying record pairs related to the same unit and observed in two different data sets, say A and B. Fellegi and Sunter (1969) suggest each record pair is tested whether generated from the set of matched or unmatched pairs. The decision function consists of the ratio between m(y) and u(y),probabilities of observing a comparison y of a set of k>3 key identifying variables in a record pair under the assumptions that the pair is a match or a non-match, respectively. These parameters are usually estimated by means of the EM algorithm using as data the comparisons on all the pairs of the Cartesian product ?=A×B. These observations (on the comparisons and on the pairs status as match or non-match) are assumed as generated independently of other pairs, assumption characterizing most of the literature on record linkage and implemented in software tools (e.g. RELAIS, Cibella et al. 2012). On the contrary, comparisons y and matching status in ? are deterministically dependent. As a result, estimates on m(y) and u(y) based on the EM algorithm are usually bad. This fact jeopardizes the effective application of the Fellegi-Sunter method, as well as automatic computation of quality measures and possibility to apply efficient methods for model estimation on linked data (e.g. regression functions), as in Chambers et al. (2015). We propose to explore ? by a set of samples, each one drawn so to preserve independence of comparisons among the selected record pairs. Simulations are encouraging.

Description: The authors used the Splink probabilistic linkage package developed by the UK Ministry of Justice, to link census data from England and Wales to itself to find duplicate census responses. A large gold standard of confirmed census duplicates was available meaning that the results of the Splink implementation could be quality assured. This paper describes the implementation and features of Splink, gives details of the settings and parameters that we used to tune Splink for our particular project, and gives the results that we obtained.

Description: Estimation at fine levels of aggregation is necessary to better describe society. Small area estimation model-based approaches that combine sparse survey data with rich data from auxiliary sources have been proven useful to improve the reliability of estimates for small domains. Considered here is a scenario where small area model-based estimates, produced at a given aggregation level, needed to be disaggregated to better describe the social structure at finer levels. For this scenario, an allocation method was developed to implement the disaggregation, overcoming challenges associated with data availability and model development at such fine levels. The method is applied to adult literacy and numeracy estimation at the county-by-group-level, using data from the U.S. Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. In this application the groups are defined in terms of age or education, but the method could be applied to estimation of other equity-deserving groups.

Description: In accordance with Statistics Canada’s long-term Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP), several initiatives have been implemented into the Labour Force Survey (LFS). One of the more direct initiatives was a targeted increase in the size of the monthly LFS sample. Furthermore, a regular Supplement program was introduced, where an additional series of questions are asked to a subset of LFS respondents and analyzed in a monthly or quarterly production cycle. Finally, the production of modelled estimates based on Small Area Estimation (SAE) methodologies resumed for the LFS and will include a wider scope with more analytical value than what had existed in the past. This paper will give an overview of these three initiatives.

Description: Sampling variance smoothing is an important topic in small area estimation. In this paper, we propose sampling variance smoothing methods for small area proportion estimation. In particular, we consider the generalized variance function and design effect methods for sampling variance smoothing. We evaluate and compare the smoothed sampling variances and small area estimates based on the smoothed variance estimates through analysis of survey data from Statistics Canada. The results from real data analysis indicate that the proposed sampling variance smoothing methods work very well for small area estimation.

Description: The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is committed to improving access to more microdata, while ensuring privacy and confidentiality is maintained, through its virtual DataLab which supports researchers to undertake complex research more efficiently. Currently, the DataLab research outputs need to follow strict rules to minimise disclosure risks for clearance. However, the clerical-review process is not cost effective and has potential to introduce errors. The increasing number of statistical outputs from different projects can potentially introduce differencing risks even though these outputs from different projects have met the strict output rules. The ABS has been exploring the possibility of providing automatic output checking using the ABS cellkey methodology to ensure that all outputs across different projects are protected consistently to minimise differencing risks and reduce costs associated with output checking.

Description:

These highlights provide a brief summary of the report "At risk: a socio-economic analysis of health and literacy among seniors", the latest monograph released using data from the International Adult Literacy Survey. This report demonstrates that the socio-economic environment remains an important determinant of health. Variables such as income and education continue to have direct and indirect effects on people's health status.

Description:

The contributors to this book examine two broad themes related to the well-being of Canadian youth. First, they document the nature of the labour market facing young adults and how it has changed since the early 1970s. Second, the authors examine how families, communities, and the public sector influence some of the ways in which children become successful and self-reliant adults. The motivation for bringing these essays together has to do with the increasing importance of child well-being in public discourse and the development of public policy. The major message to emerge is that the future of Canada's children is both a good news, and a bad news story. Labour markets have changed dramatically, and on average it is now more difficult to obtain a strong foothold that will lead to increasing prosperity. Many young Canadians, however, are well prepared by their family and community backgrounds to deal with these new challenges, and as young parents are in a position to pass this heritage on to their children. However, this has not been the case for an increasingly larger minority, a group whose children in turn may face greater than average challenges in getting ahead in life. A companion volume published in February of 1998 by Statistics Canada called Government finances and generational equity examines the operation of government taxes and transfers from a generational perspective, focusing on the conduct of fiscal policy and the relative status of individuals in successive generations.

Description:

These highlights provide a brief summary of the report "Literacy utilization in Canadian workplaces", the latest monograph released using data from the International Adult Literacy Survey. This report examines the fit or mismatch between the job requirements of Canadian workers and their literacy skills, thus profiling patterns of literacy usage and under- usage in the Canadian labour market.

Description:

This report, based on results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), focuses on changes in the family environment, specifically, common-law unions, custody arrangements and financial issues. The NLSCY is a comprehensive survey which will follow the development of children in Canada and paint a picture of their lives.

Description:

These highlights provide a brief summary of the report " The Value of Words: Literacy and Economic Security in Canada", the latest monograph released using data from the International Adult Literacy Survey. Canada, like many other industrialized countries, is increasingly being forced to face the literacy problem within its own borders. Over the past decade, the issue has become more prominent on the national policy and research agenda. There has been little systematic research in Canada, however, on the relationship between literacy and income security. Using data from the Canadian component of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), this study seeks to fill this research gap. An in-depth exploration of the links between literacy and economic security will build on existing knowledge and will also provide useful insights that will help shape public policy.

Description:

This publication presents data, charts, map and analytical text on trips and socio-economic characteristics of Canadians travelling within Canada. Trip information includes purpose, activities, mode of transportation, length of stay, origin and destination, and expenditures. In addition to providing national data, the publication also includes some tables presenting provincial and metropolitan detail.

Description:

Based on a presentation by Dr. Ivan Fellegi to the Federal Deputy Ministers' Committee on the Economic Renewal of Rural Canada in September l996, Understanding rural Canada uses charts and maps to present information on: rural demography showing population change and net migration by census division for the most recent 5-year period (l989 to l994); a focus on rural youth including information on education attained, plans for further education and ablility to use computers; rural employment, rural unemployment, rural employment in growing sectors and rural employment by small businesses; a classification of census divisions by level of average incomes and change in average incomes to show that many rural areas have lower incomes and their incomes are falling further behind; and, a typology of census divisions where rural areas are classified to rural nirvana areas, agro-rural areas, rural enclave areas, rural resourced areas and native north areas. This presentation was an outgrowth of the publication Rural Canada: a profile published by the federal Interdepartmental Committee on Rural and Remote Canada in March, l995.

Description:

Bankruptcy rates have been increasing in Canada. Almost half of the firms in Canada that go bankrupt do so primarily because of their own deficiencies rather than externally generated problems. They do not develop the basic internal strengths to survive. Overall weakness in management, combined with a lack of market for their product, cause these firms to fail.

This study suggests that the underlying factor contributing to financial difficulties is management failure rather than external factors associated with imperfect capital markets. Many bankrupt firms face problems in attaining financing in capital markets; but, it is the internal lack of managerial expertise in many of these firms that prevents exploration of different financing options.

Description:

"Generational equity" is a topic that has gradually risen higher and higher on the agenda of governments at all levels. In fact, it is a matter not just for government policy, but a topic that touches many Canadians directly: young and old, parents and grandparents. Canadian policy makers increasingly have to deal with issues associated with the relative status of individuals between successive generations. The reform of public pension programs presents the most obvious example, but there are many other developments that raise the same type of issue. Indeed, the heightened concern over government fiscal policies is due in large part to the readiness of many to view government deficits and debt as a burden on future generations. Generational equity, however, is also a concern of individual Canadians and their families. The allocation of resources between the young and the old within the family is becoming an increasingly important issue for many, especially in light not only of an aging population but also the belief that those just entering the labour force will likely not attain the standard of living to which their parents have become accustomed.

The contributors to this book examine the operation of government taxes and expenditures from a generational perspective. In part the motivation for bringing these essays together is to offer comprehensive and up-to-date information on the age incidence of government finances. This motivation, however, also has to do with the development of a new accounting framework, Generational Accounting, that has gained some currency in many industrialized countries, particularly in the United States. It is a truism to say that good analysis requires good data, and certainly Statistic Canada's central role is to offer high-quality data in support of analysis and decision making. But the opposite is equally true, if not as obvious: good data requires good analysis. That is to say, new analytical frameworks often highlight the need to organize existing data in different ways, as well as the need for the development of new types of data. This is certainly one of several reasons that Statistics Canada has sought to develop a strong analytical capacity, and to maintain strong ties with the research community. This book is meant to contribute to this process by examining Canadian data through the lens of Generational Accounting, and by analyzing some of the issues that arise.

Description:

On September 11 and 12, 1996 Statistics Canada's Business and Trade Statistics Field sponsored its eight annual conference on statistics and economic analysis in Ottawa. The theme of the conference was Canadian Economic Structural Change in the Age of NAFTA. Guest speakers and submitted papers discussed a variety of topics related to economic restructuring and the NAFTA.