2. Data and descriptive statistics

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2.1 2005 General Social Survey (GSS) - Time Use

Our analysis is based on the culture component of Statistics Canada's 2005 GSS, which contains individual-level information on what Canadians aged 15 and older do with their time and what proportion of time is spent on work related activities, personal care, household maintenance and leisure pursuits. In addition to time use, detailed information on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics can be obtained from the 2005 GSS, making it a potentially valuable dataset for applied social research. Although the 2005 GSS includes over 19,000 respondents, only half the sample were asked whether they participated in a range of culture and sporting activities during the 12 months preceding the survey, and how often they experienced these activities. As a result, the final sample consisted of 9,851 individuals (4,255 males and 5,596 females).⁵

Our outcome of interest is how often an adult Canadian experienced each of the following culture activities during the 12 months preceding the 2005 GSS: attending theatrical performances; attending popular music performances; visiting historic sites; visiting conservation areas or nature parks; going to a public gallery or art museum; listening to music; going to a movie or drive-in; watching videos; reading books; reading magazines and using a library. As is typical with time use surveys, various measures were used to code participation levels. For instance, while book reading intensity was coded in five ordered categories (i.e., read a book a week; a month; every three months; every six months; and at least one a year), the frequency of using library services as a leisure activity was reported into three hierarchical categories (i.e., one to four times a year; five or more times, but not every month; and at least once every month).

For ease of interpretation and coding uniformity, we use an approach similar to McCarthy et al. (2001) and McCarthy and Jinett (2001) and convert participation levels related to each activity into three ordered categories: never participating (i.e., category 1), participating only occasionally (i.e., category 2), and regular participation (i.e., category 3). In so doing, we also avoid cells with low frequency.⁶ Lastly, we considered as missing data, subjects who failed to answer important questions such as whether they attended a given cultural activity and how often. As the amount of those missing values constituted anywhere from less that 0.5% to close to 3% of the remaining sample, they were simply removed from each variable.

2.2 Cross-tabular analysis

An examination of the distribution of culture participants (Table 4) indicates that one third of all Canadians 15 years of age or older were occasional visitors of at least one of the following during the year preceding the survey: conservation areas or nature parks (30%) and historic sites (28%). Meanwhile, about one-fifth of them were occasional participants in at least one of: theatrical performances (17%), popular music performances (19%), and public galleries or art museums (22%). At the same time, about 5% of adult Canadians were frequent audiences of at least one of: theatrical plays (5.1%), popular music (4.4%), historic sites (4.9%), and public galleries or art museums (4%).

Results reported in Table 4 also indicate that 38.4% of all adult Canadians were infrequent music listeners while 44% listened to music frequently. Six in ten adult Canadians were either occasional (28%) or frequent (32.4%) movie goers. About five in ten adult Canadians were occasional readers of books (50.4%) as a leisure activity, while slightly more than three in ten (35%) were occasional readers of magazines. By contrast, a higher percentage of the Canadian adult population were frequent readers of magazines (42%) as compared to books (14.4%) during the year prior to the survey. At the same time, only 13% of adult Canadians were occasional users of library services while 15.4% were frequent users. Chart 3 shows attendance rates across culture activities.

Chart 3
Participation in culture activities, Canada, 2005

Chart 3 shows that the highest participation levels were reported for listening to music (82.3%), watching videos (77.3%), reading magazines (76.8%), reading books (64.9%) and going to the movies (60.2%). Chart 3 also reveals that the lowest levels of participation were recorded for attendance at theatrical performances (22.2%) and popular music performances (23.4%). Given these low figures, studies of the social correlates of culture participation, which focus on participation in live performances (for example Fisher and Preece, 2003), are unlikely to be informative of culture consumption for the average Canadian adult population.

Irrespective of the discipline, descriptive statistics (Table 4) show that attendance rates generally increased with family income, with the highest difference occurring between adult individuals with family incomes $60,000 or higher versus those with family income under $30,000. Also, we note that adult Canadians possessing a university degree attended all culture activities in higher proportions than those with some secondary education or less. Further, descriptive statistics reported in Table 4 suggest that occasional and frequent participants generally had parents and a conjugal partner with high educational qualifications. Chart 4 shows rates of culture participation by gender and discipline.

Chart 4
Participation in culture activities by sex, Canada, 2005

As can be seen from Chart 4, attending theatrical performances, visiting public galleries and art museums, using library services, and reading books and magazines were all relatively more popular among women than men. Conversely, visits to historic sites, nature parks and conservation areas had a higher percentage of male participation, compared to women.

Chart 5
Participation in culture activities by age group, Canada, 2005

The analysis of statistical information concerning participation by age group revealed two opposite patterns. On one hand, individuals aged 50 and over were overrepresented in audiences at theatrical performances, public galleries and art museums and for regular reading of books. On the other hand, they were underrepresented in attendance at popular music performances, movies and drive-ins, for frequent music listening and regular viewing of videos as a leisure activity.

2.3 Correlation analysis

Before presenting our estimation strategy, we pause to investigate the linear correlation between variables used in this paper. As all dependent variables and most explanatory variables are expressed in ordinal intervals, Kendall's rank correlations are reported in Table 5. First, we note that the number of times a person participated in each culture activity during the year prior to the survey was positively correlated with socioeconomic factors such as parents' education, household income, educational qualification and economic activity. By contrast, culture activity was negatively associated with marital status (married, living common-law and widowed).

The analysis of correlation statistics suggests that consumption of cultural activities such as going to movies or drive-ins, watching videos and listening to music were all negatively associated with age. Further, we observe a positive and significant relationship between participation across various cultural activities, suggesting that most disciplines selected in this study do not compete for audience. Lastly, a close study of relationships between explanatory variables indicated that our predictors do not suffer from multicollinearity bias.⁷ In what follows, we explain the methodology used to estimate the social correlates of culture participation in Canada.