Data quality, concepts and methodology

Survey methods

The target population for the survey consists of immigrants who arrived in Canada from abroad between October 1^st, 2000 and September 30^th, 2001, and were 15 years or older at the time of arrival. The target population accounts for approximately 169,400 of the 250,000 persons admitted to Canada during this period.

Individuals who applied and landed from within Canada are excluded from the survey. These immigrants may have been in Canada for a considerable length of time before officially “landing” and would therefore likely demonstrate quite different integration characteristics from those who recently arrived in Canada. Refugees claiming asylum from within Canada are also excluded from the scope of the survey. Coverage of the survey included all Census Metropolitan Areas and non-remote Census Agglomerations.

The population of interest is immigrants in the target population who still reside in Canada at the time of a given wave. During the six months between arrival and the first interview, and the period between the first and second interviews, some immigrants left Canada to return to their country of origin, or for another country. These individuals are excluded from the population of interest. At wave one, the population of interest was estimated at about 164,200 immigrants; and at wave two, it was estimated to be 160,800.

The sample is made up of 12 independent monthly samples selected over consecutive months. Collection was completed separately for each month of landing. Interviews were completed in 1 of 15 languages, including English and French. The majority of wave one interviews were conducted face-to-face and lasted on average 90 minutes; for the second wave, about half of the interviews were conducted face-to-face and lasted about 65 minutes.

In total, 20,322 immigrants were selected from the target population; 12,040 responded to the survey in the first wave and were followed in wave two. Of these, 9,322 responded to the wave two interview.

Each respondent in the survey has been assigned a specific weight, which estimates the number of other immigrants represented by this respondent in the population of interest. As a result of the complexity of the sample design and adjustments to account for non-response, it is important to use the survey weights in order to generate unbiased and reliable statistics.

The estimates presented in this paper are based on the 5,994 immigrants who, at their arrival, were of prime working-age (24 to 44 years old) and who participated in the wave two interview. This sample is representative of the wave two population of interest (for this age group) through the use of the wave two longitudinal weights. The characteristics of the wave two population of interest six months after their arrival in Canada may differ somewhat from published estimates (see Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada: Process, Progress and Prospects, ¹ for example) for the wave one population of interest, as the former population represents a subset of the latter.