Monday, June 27, 2016

Households and Environment (2013) residential heating fuels

Question

I have a researcher looking at the Households and the Environments survey (2013). Is it possible to get a breakdown of the approximately 3100 "non-CMA" responses for question EH_Q02 A through G by Census Division or Dissemination Area?

Answer

Analysis at the Dissemination Area (DA) level is not possible. We do not have DAs attached to records on our master file so there would have to be some cost-recoverable work undertaken to achieve this. However, we would recommend against this as DAs are generally small geographic units, which means it is extremely unlikely that there would be many, if any, DAs with a sufficient number of records to be releasable, assuming that the CVs would meet our release criteria. Given that the area of interest is non-CMA Ontario, I would be surprised if any met this criteria.

Analysis at the Census Division (CD) level is, in theory, possible. Constraining the analysis to only non-CMA households in Ontario will result in many CDs having variables that will be flagged as “use with caution” or unreleasable due to our data quality guidelines. However, this is work that we could undertake on a cost-recoverable basis with the understanding that the costs would be payable by the client regardless of the number of releasable values in the results. Thus, I would not advise this as it could be quite costly and not produce satisfactory results. Still, if there is interest in pursuing this, please let me know and I will prepare an estimate.

If the researcher is eligible to use the RDC, they could undertake the analysis at the CD level themselves. The 2013 HES microdata in the RDCs contains the necessary geographic variables and we could provide some advice on how to work with the non-CMA households in Ontario.

Finally, the 2013 release (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/150310/dq150310a-eng.htm) talks about how households heat their homes, stating that “those from Ontario and in the West mostly opt for forced air furnaces burning natural gas”. In particular, it notes that the forced air furnaces were the dominant type of heating system in Ontario (73% of households) and that, “[i]n general, natural gas is available to most households from Ontario to British Columbia”. I know this is not as specific as the researcher is interested in, but he (or she) may find it helpful.

CCHS question re variable INS_1

Question

Variable INS_1 is Insurance – prescription medications (literal question: Do you have insurance that covers all or part of the cost of your prescription medications?)

The questions of the researcher refer to the 2013-2014 iteration (available in <odesi> but not in STC Nesstar) and the 2007-2008 iteration:

1. For 2007-2008 do the yes and no responses refer to one of the individual years or is it the combined two years? If refering to one of the years, is the other year available and/or is there a combined number?

2. For 2013-2014, there is (in <odesi>), there are both 2013-2014 and 2014 entries. She would like confirmation that the 2013-2014 yes/no responses are the combined numbers and wonders if there is a separate number for 2013. The 2013-2014 numbers are approximately double that for the 2014 only. Perhaps one could just subtract to get the 2013 numbers, but I don’t want to offer that advice of my own volition! J

Answer

1. The two year file is a combination of two years, with the sample weights representing the Canadian population at a specific point in time. For example, the 2007-2008 file sample weights summate to roughly 28 million people, the Canadian population aged 12+ at a single point in time. A variable indicating the year of interview is not generally available on PUMF datasets but is available on master data sets to researchers each year. Annual files produced in off-years (e.g. 2009, 2011, 2013) tend to not become PUMFs while annual files produced in even years (e.g. 2010, 2012, 2014) do. Biannual PUMF files are created every two years.

2. The 2013 CCHS does exist as a master data set and is available to researchers that complete and have an approved RDC request. It has not however been made into a public use microdata file like 2014. We frequently get requests through the inbox about making a de facto PUMF by subtracting an annual file’s records from the biannual file (e.g. 2013-2014 minus 2014 = 2013). As the PUMF files do not have specific record identifiers at the respondent-level, and because PUMF files suppress other indirect identifiers to meet confidentiality guidelines, doing this would be a complex undertaking. If 2013 data is required, it might be best to request RDC access to the annual master microdata for that year.

Free range eggs

Question

Well, here is another one from left field. Would anyone know where I might be able to find numbers on free range egg production in Canada?

Answer

The Census of Agriculture does not collect data specifically on free range eggs. The egg production questions on our questionnaire do not ask the respondents to report if their eggs are free range or otherwise."

I've done a bit of a search and noticed that Egg Farmers of Canada seem to have quite a bit of information on their website www.eggfarmers.ca . They might be a good resource to try contacting?

Ontario public school enrolment by school

Question

I'm helping a researcher who is looking for annual Ontario public school enrolment by individual school going back to 2007/2008. Basically she needs older (and newer, ideally) editions of this dataset: https://www.ontario.ca/data/ontario-public-schools-enrolment.

She's frustrated by the time it takes to get a response from the Ontario Ministry of Education, so I thought I would check if this is available from Statistics Canada (e.g. through the ESES) as a custom tabulation?

Barring that, anyone else have any suggestions for other sources of this data, and/or tips on successfully requesting data from the Ontario Ministry of Education?
Answer

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Requesting data underlying Historical Age Pyramid

Question

A student here would like to be able to use the statistics underlying the historical age pyramid at https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/pyramid-pyramide/his/index-eng.cfm. Specifically, he would like to have population by single years of age by gender for each year (1921 through 2011).

I found Age Groups (13) and Sex (3) for the population of Canada, Provinces and Territories, 1921 to 2011 Census (http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/tbt-tt/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=102186&PRID=0&PTYPE=101955&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2011&THEME=88&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=), but suspect that he wants the individual years of age rather age groups.

Are these time series available, or would requesting them require a special tabulation?

Answer

I have been unable to find the time series for individual years dating back to 1921. These series seem to be available for age groups.

For individual years I found online:

Topic-based tabulation: Age (131) and Sex (3) for the Population of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2006 and 2011 Censuses

98-311-XCB2011021

Age (123) and Sex (3) for Population, for Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 1996 and 2001 Censuses - 100% Data - Cat. No. 97F0003XCB2001001.

Others for age for 2001 census

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/english/census01/Products/standard/themes/DataProducts.cfm?S=1&T=37&ALEVEL=2&FREE=0

If they were to obtain a custom tabulation from the Regional offices, they would however only be able to get tables as far back as 1971.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Intensive Care / Critical Care beds

Question

The researcher requires:
Intensive Care Beds and Critical Care Beds in Canada from CIHI:

1- number of beds
2- bed utilization
3- cost of operating a bed/year
4- admission rate

Is the Discharge Abstracts Database (
DAD) the place to go for this information?

Answer

The DAD will probably only be able to answer #4 – Admission Rate. The DAD can identify the overall number of hospitalizations, and the number of those hospitalizations that have had one or more stays in a Special Care Unit of some kind.

Points 1-3 regarding the number of Intensive Care / Critical Care beds, bed utilization and cost of operating a bed per year can be answered using the Canadian MIS Database (CMDB).

Please feel free to contact the Financial Standards and Information team (fsi@cihi.ca) for more information regarding the CMDB.